Lily's Worst Hair Day
by Dare she says it
Summary: When Lily loses nearly all of her famous thick, dark, red hair, will James feel differently about his beloved Evans?
1. Stupid enough to work!

Nothing you recognize is of my creation. They are those of Miss J.K. Rowling. I know that most of you must be weary of James/Lily fics, and it's terribly understandable if you lose patience with my story quite quickly. I am a recent fan of the ship, and this is my homage to them.

* * *

"Must you go so soon?" moaned a perfectly flushed, perfectly breathless Douglas Adams as Lily Evans, his girlfriend of a remarkable two weeks, pulled away slightly from his intimate embrace in order to properly look at him, and flash him a wide, sympathetic smile.

"I'm sorry Doug, truly," Lily implored, running a conciliatory finger gently down the handsome length of his nose, giggling. "But this sort of thing comes with dating the Head Girl, I'm afraid."

Douglas gave her an amiable nod—what must be the tenth one he had spoiled her with that week—and reluctantly slackened his tight grip on her waist, taking a small step back, and watching with an amused grin on his face as Lily quickly straightened her school robes, and expertly adjusted her long, thick hair. "What's McGonagall having you do this time?"

"McGonagall? Oh, I wish," Lily sighed heavily, forcing herself to appear absurdly thrilled at the hideous prospect of sorting out yet another insufferable Slytherin first year,"It's a request from Slughorn. Apparently this one came across a baby dragon on a trip to Hogsmeade,"

"A baby dragon? Well, that's certainly a first," Douglas replied, genuinely alarmed,

"Yes, and guess whose unfortunate job it'll be to coax the first year into giving said baby dragon up," Lily had to practically restrain herself from groaning out loud so great was her displeasure.

Normally, she wasn't particularly opposed to counseling first years. Truthfully, some of them delighted her, reminded her quite easily of herself at that age: very frightened, enormously worried, and preoccupied with every passing male that ever shed them a bit of attention...

But Slytherin first-years were an _entirely_ different sort.

They didn't cling to Lily, they didn't gaze at her adoringly with eyes widening to the size of saucers, and mouths open as though she were a Goddess appearing before them in the flesh. No. The moment they chanced the smallest glance at Lily's house colors, they immediately went irreversibly sour, regarding her with nothing short of unrestrained hostility as though she had done something horribly, unforgivably wrong.

Douglas waited for Lily patiently by the doorway, and leaned in softly to give her a final kiss. "See you later then," He whispered, smelling the small tangle of hair she had tucked behind her ear, and Lily gave him a tiny, amorous peck on the nose. "See you." It had taken ages for Lily to finally settle on a decent bloke, and Douglas Adams of Ravenclaw, while not exactly the most exquisite-looking specimen, was the ultimate remedy for the kind of boys she had been accustomed to dating, in the past.

'And change for the better,' Lily decided inwardly, hoping that with any luck, James Potter would finally cease pestering her, and move on for both their sakes.

* * *

"I don't want to talk to _you_!" Eleven-year-old Isa Blakemore exclaimed, sounding perfectly as though she had been deceived—which she probably was, thought Lily, bemused—as she tiredly made her way inside the small, dark classroom Slughorn had arranged to be empty for the both of them.

'Can't exactly say that the feeling isn't mutual, though,' Lily thought miserably, growing slightly wary of the small Hungarian Horntail that sat, glowering at her with great, rotund, yellow eyes on Isa's lap.

"Isa," Lily began, her throat decidedly dry with her obvious lack of enthusiasm, "I'm afraid that Professor Slughorn has informed me-"

"That chubby old man ought to keep his livery mouth shut!" Isa shrieked, hugging the dragon close to her chest as though it were a harmless stuffed animal,

"-of your dragon," Lily continued, refusing to flinch, "Now, Isa, I'm sure you know perfectly well that it is against school rules to keep anything other than an owl, a cat, or a toad-"

"Those things are boring!" Isa gave an affected little shudder at _'things,' _"Marjorie here is the pride of the common room!"

Lily had to suppress what would have been a very nasty cackle indeed, attempting, in her silent fit of hilarity, to picture who exactly in Isa's beloved common room would agree. She had already overheard the Slytherins in her year complaining, all of them passionately lamenting burnt essays, fearfully inspecting the hem of their robes for the slightest glimmer of fire, and pinching their noses hard at the mere recollection of having discovered dried, dragon dung on either their beds, or on the inside of their shoes the night before.

"Listen, I know you love, Marjorie, Isa," Lily tried to sympathize, lowering her head so that her and Isa were on eye level, "But don't you want Marjorie to be happy as well? I'm sure she misses her mother very much,"

"She told me about her mother. She left her there, out in the cold," Isa clicked her tongue, apparently disgusted, blowing loud kisses at Marjorie, who was glaring at her, appearing increasingly harassed, "I'm her mother now."

Lily gritted her teeth, no longer keeping up the effort to seem pleasant.

"Isa, dragons are not to be raised by wizards. They need to be with their own kind-"

"I'm tired of listening to you! I want to go back to bed!"

"Isa, please-"

"NO! You're just jealous! I won't let you take Marjorie from me!"

Lily threw her hair back angrily in frustration, her breathing resembling that of a caged tiger's, _'Do not hex first years, do not hex first years, do not hex first years…' _

"I don't care what you say! Marjorie and I are going! And there's nothing you can do about it," Isa hopped off her seat, dismissing Lily boldly with an arrogant thrust of her chin, and before Lily knew what she was doing, she had reached over at Isa with both hands, and had plunked the girl forcibly back on her seat.

"OW!" Isa screamed a little louder than was strictly necessary, clearly hoping to prompt someone from the other side of the door to burst in, and come to her aid.

"Isa, I beg of you, it doesn't have to be this difficult."

Isa was completely silent for a moment, as though from having fully exhausted herself, and with a quick, inspired peek at Marjorie, looked up at Lily, fearlessly meeting her eye.

"If you don't let me out of this bloody room, I'll sic Marjorie on you,"

Lily actually snorted.

"Isa, that dragon will be taken from you whether you like it _or not_."

* * *

"It's not… it's not that bad, Lils," lied an inwardly terrified Belinda Carmichael as Lily, face horribly swollen and scarlet with tears, reluctantly pulled a wrinkled pillowcase off the top of her forehead, revealing a hideous cap of spiky, unkempt red hair.

"My life is completely, and utterly over!" Lily wailed, returning the pillowcase up over her face as though she were afflicted with a deformity, and Pragna Patil, who solemnly bit her lower lip in mingled pity and discomfort, squeezed Lily's right shoulder, gesturing for Belinda to say something more comforting.

"Lils, I don't understand, how did it happen?"

"Isa Blakemore. That's how it happened," Lily sniffled bitterly, wiping her nose on her sleeve,

"I was supposed to take her baby dragon for Slughorn, and-" Lily looked up wildly from her hands, "She had the dragon attack me!"

"Can't Madame Pomfrey issue you a hair-growing potion? Isn't there a spell to make it grow back?" Belinda urged desperately, and Lily shook her head, as though she had already considered, and exhausted both possibilities with no luck.

"Madam Pomfrey says that the potion will take about a month to make, she doesn't have all the necessary ingredients…as for a spell, unless we spend the remainder of the night attempting to invent a successful one…"

"So… what are you going to do?" Pragna swallowed, looking as though she might not like to know the answer, and Lily gazed at her, hopelessly resigned.

"Madame Pomfrey suggests I buy a wig, and since our Hogsmeade trip won't be until this weekend, I have three whole days in where I shall look like a boy, and I'll be a laughing stock! And then everybody would know I'd be wearing a wig!"

"Maybe, you can wear a hat or something... say you had a nasty ink stain, and you had to apply potion on it to get it out... and... the smell is horrible! So-so you need to keep your hair in a hat for three days! Or it will stink up the place-and... should I be quiet now?"

Lily blinked.

"Belinda?"

"Yes…?"

"I think that might just be stupid enough to work!"


	2. Happy now, Potter?

Nothing you recognize is of my creation. They are those of Miss J.K. Rowling.

* * *

James Potter stood absolutely still, examining, with narrowed, critical eyes, his rather unhappy-looking reflection staring back at him from within the grimy confines of the common room bath mirror.

Presently, he fiddled with the way his glasses sat slightly askew on the bridge of his nose, deciding with a quizzical eyebrow and a set jaw, to tuck his glasses farther back into his ears.

"Alright, all systems go," James whispered gamely to himself, and with an eager nod, he exitted the bath, rumpling the back of his dark hair with his right hand thoroughly as he went.

"Ready for breakfast, then?" mused Sirius from inside the common room, which was now entirely vacant of the other students who had all departed shortly for the Great Hall, desperate to assuage the delicate pangs in their stomach.

"Quite ready, yes," James smiled, following a mumbling Sirius to the portrait hole,

"I swear, Prongs. You're becoming more like a woman by the day,"

"Oh well, I suppose it's perfectly easy for you, looking like the incarnate of Adonis,"

Sirius ceased walking for a moment, his sleepy expression livening to reveal a cheeky, lopsided smile.

"Why, are you flirting with me, Potter? That's certainly a bit odd. I thought I needed at least a nice bum, and flowing red hair to elicit that sort of coquettish behavior,"

James frowned, flushing a tell-tale, blood-red.

"To be fair though, Prongs, I do have a nice bum," Sirius considered out loud, "Or so Roberta Bowles tells me,"

"The same Roberta Bowles that allegedly snogged Snivellus's monstrous nose after that one Quidditch match?"

Sirius turned right around to glare at James, favoring his best friend's biting remark with an arrogant curl of his lips, "She was drunk."

"With celebratory Butterbeer?" James sputtered out in disbelief,

"Evans snogs Adams with her shirt open!"

James blanched an immediate paper-white,

"You told me that was a lie! …She doesn't really? _Surely not!_"

"You weren't there, "

"She doesn't... she wouldn't!"

"Oh but she does!" insisted Sirius cruelly to James's incredulous stare,

"She doesn't."

"Does,"

"Doesn't,"

"Oh for Merlin's sake, be silent the pair of you!" impatiently broke in an adamant Remus Lupin who was propping a battered copy of Joshua Plotkin's _Mother, I'm a Werewolf _distractedly against an empty pitcher of pumpkin juice.

"Moony, you talk to Evans!" James ventured desperately with open hands, "Does she snog Adams with her shirt open?"

Remus cocked a scandalized eyebrow.

"How would I know!? And thank you, by the way, for that rather _savory_ image,"

"Blame, Padfoot here, apparently he spends his afternoons spying on Evans and her boyfriend," James sighed moodily, to Sirius's uncontained amusement,

"Bloody hell, Prongs! You should be able to tell if I'm lying right about now!"

James felt his face grow unbearably hot. He'd never felt so silly.

"Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable..."

"Two times, mate, that bit never gets old," Sirius beamed, endeavoring to pat a sulking James consolingly on the back, "Where's your lady love anyway?"

James glanced up hopefully from Remus's towering stack of buttered toast, and found, to his enormous shock and disappointment, that Lily Evans was nowhere in sight.

"Moony, have you seen Evans?"

"Five seats up—_five seats up, Prongs!_" Remus repeated louder, in response to the confused look James shot him,

"What? I looked and-"

"Not the most observant individual, are you?" Remus abruptly turned a page in his book, "Look closer."

James followed Remus's advice, and gripped the edge of the table to afford him a better view from where he sat. He counted five seats ahead: _Wood, Thomas, Raskin, Rosen, Carmichael, and-_

"Evans?" James broke out loudly in surprise. Sirius clucked his tongue.

"Honestly, Prongs. Subtlety is key, will you ever listen?"

"Why is she wearing that hideously frizzy, old hat?" James had to laugh despite himself.

"A stain apparently," Remus informed James warningly, easily detecting the note of burning excitement in his friend's voice. "So don't tease her about it."

"A stain? On her hair? I could help her with that," James felt suddenly lifted.

"No, she explicitly said that-" Remus found himself suddenly speaking to no one however, for both James and Sirius had gotten up, sniggering, from their seats.

"Anyway, it should all be sorted out in the weekend-"

"Evans!"

At the sound of James's voice, Lily immediately pursed her lips in annoyance.

"What is it now, Potter?"

"Just heard of your misfortune," James casually broke in with a salesman's smile,

"Have you, now?"

"Indeed I have. And just so you know, I'd be more than happy to take care of it for you,"

"So you're planning to move to the Orient then?" Lily chirruped in tones of mock excitement, and the two girls sitting the closest to her exploded with laughter.

"Now, now, Evans," Sirius drawled pleasantly, "That's no way to treat your saviours,"

"Saviours?" Lily's lips twitched into a sneer, "I hardly need saving,"

"You certain of that?" Sirius leaned in, fingering Lily's hat with a distasteful look on his face, "Because this could, quite possibly, be the worst thing I've seen on you since Elijah Cornwood,"

"You shut your mouth, Black, and mind your own bloody business!" Lily cried, appearing well, and truly livid now, her big, green eyes positively swimming in fury as she glared nastily from over her shoulder at a triumphant-looking Sirius.

"Evans, listen. It's just a simple vanishing spell, nothing to worry about," James was desperate to assure Lily, and curiously, she began to pull at her hat as though fearful it would fall off,

"Just a flick of our wands, and it's gone, we've done it before-"

"Listen, Potter. That's all well and good, and I appreciate it. But I didn't ask for your help."

James couldn't help but wince at Lily's resistance.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you that if one is in trouble, one must ask for help? I don't care if you loathe me to pieces Evans, but you're clearly in need, and I'm going to help!"

And before Lily could even finish what strangely sounded to James like a dramatic, high-pitched, "No!" at least twelve pieces of balled-up tissue paper came tumbling down from the inside of Lily's frizzy hat, abruptly joining the omelettes, and sausages that lay cool on the plates of those that sat, suddenly horrified, around her.

Lily's shoulders began to tremble as though she were crying, and James, stunned, took a disoriented step backwards, his bottom lip low and quivering at the full realization of what he done.

"Are you happy now, Potter?" Pragna Patil scowled, and what followed made James terribly sick to his stomach: slowly but surely, people started nudging at one another, laughing.

"Lils, come on!" A gaggle of Lily's friends worriedly rushed to where she sat, shoving both James and Sirius roughly aside in order to shield Lily from inspection.

"Lily, I didn't mean to-"

"Enough, Potter. I think you've done enough damage for one day, don't you?"

And with that Belinda Carmichael turned to attend to an unspeaking Lily, gesturing for the others to follow as she lead them all out in a great rush from the thundering din of the Great Hall.

* * *

I would like to thank **loonymarauder** who was rather helpful in sorting out a particular kink in this chapter. :) To anyone else present -cough- please don't hesitate to point out anything else awry! (I'm sure there are others I have shamelessly overlooked.)


	3. No worries

Once again I own nothing you recognize:)

* * *

_Disappear… disappear... disappear..._

Lily was earnestly whispering the word over and over to herself... again and again and again in the small, feverish hope that her body would do exactly just that: _disappear._

'Blast!' She moaned, wincing as her ears caught the depressing sound of loud footsteps multiplying outside her stall.

'Brilliant! Just what I need,' Lily rolled her eyes, 'Another version of how spotty Lily Evans made an absolute fool of herself!'

Lily bit at her knuckles, positively cringing as she heard what sounded like a rather amused fourth-year regale her shrieking friends with a more dramatic version of what had happened earlier at breakfast...

"Apparently, she told Potter that Adams gives the best snogs! And he yanked the hat right off her head!"

"Oh, I do feel a tad sorry for her!" simpered a second voice for whom Lily presently felt a silent contempt, "I mean, did you see? She looked _absolutely_ ridiculous in that hair! I don't know what could have possibly possessed her to have it cut!"

"Camillus! Look at the time! We'll be late for Potions!"

Lily let out an internal sigh of relief, it was all she could do not to open the door to her stall, and horrify the girls with her dramatization of an indignant veela. If she had to endure yet another bleeding conversation about-

"Lily?"

Lily immediately raised her head from its pathetic, cowered position on her lap, nearly choking with fright.

"Remus?"

She couldn't mistake that voice anywhere.

"Remus, what are you doing _here?_"

Remus endeavored a soft chuckle. "Hiding in the stalls are we? I thought you had outgrown this method for evasion years ago,"

Inside the stall, Lily couldn't help but replace her small, sullen frown with a great, reminiscent smile, recalling—with a slight, hot flush on her cheeks—that it was exactly outside of this very stall nearly seven years ago that Remus Lupin had assured her that if it were any consolation to herself, he, personally, believed she wasn't a _Weasley_.

"What can I say?" Lily laughed, surprised she was still capable of the act, "Old habits are hard to break,"

"Too true," Remus succinctly agreed, and Lily lifted herself from the chipping seat of the toilet, settling, with a great deal of abandon, on the cool stone of the floor. On the other side, she could make out the faint rustle of Remus's robes. She felt the door stir quietly against her, and knew that her and Remus were resting shoulder to shoulder.

"So why aren't you at Ancient Runes? I didn't take you for a skiver,"

"You didn't think I'd possibly go without my brilliant partner! I'd be hopelessly lost!"

Lily rolled her eyes, smiling this time. Remus was the top student in Feltwater's class, followed closely only by herself.

"Now Lily—truly, you don't expect to stay in there forever?"

"Not forever," Lily reflected with a forefinger poised quizzically on her mouth, "Just for a few months! …Perhaps _then_ I won't see a speck of James Potter," Lily added half-heartedly, frowning again despite all of her good cheer returned.

Nearby, Remus heaved a regretful sigh.

"Really Lily, he means well—he had no idea, he was only trying to help,"

"He's always trying to help, Remus! I know he's a good person, you've said loads of times that I should give him a chance, but I just—" Lily trailed off uncertainly, "I just—I can't wait for him to grow up forever, I'd be an old maid!"

Lily raked a slim hand through her poorly clipped hair in frustration.

"I just wanted him to leave me alone—_alone!_" repeated Lily in a loud, incredulous voice, "Just for one bloody day!"

"I'm so sorry Lily—perhaps go bald," Remus suggested, sounding almost serious in his jibe, "That might do the trick,"

"Of all the cheek!"

Lily quickly lifted the latch to her stall door, not at all surprised to see Remus scrambling clumsily to the exit with a wicked grin on his face.

* * *

"You've got to admit, Prongs," yelled Sirius distractedly over the loud, malevolent snarls of Professor Fennela's _Venomous Tentaculas_, "Things _have_ progressed between you and Evans... they've gone from bad to worse,"

"Remind me again why you're my best mate?" James piped up frowning, crying a sudden, _"Bloody hell!"_ as Peter's Tentacula hungrily seized him from behind with four of its many gnarled tentacles.

"Because you love me like a brother, and I've nowhere to live," Sirius answered glibly, pushing aside a hysterically whimpering Peter as he attempted to wrestle James off the particularly resistant Tentacula, "If you're interested though, this Tentacula looks like a promising rebound,"

"Clever," James retorted, gripping Lupin's gloved and outstretched hand as Peter tittered shamelessly at Sirius's impressive manipulation of the Tentacula's tentacles. It had now come to humorously resemble a giant, red pretzel.

James smoothed the special robes Professor Fennela had given the students earlier for protection.

"I want to visit her later, apologize,"

Remus immediately frowned at James.

"Don't. I think it would be best if you left her alone for a little bit."

James shot the pretzel-Tentacula a hopeless stare—oddly enough, he seemed to feel a distinct kinship with it.

"Is she that furious with me? Bloody hell, she must truly _hate_ me,"

"She doesn't hate you, she's never hated you!" Remus brushed the hair out of his eyes with a smouldering air of impatience, securing the stopper on his occupied vile of Tentacula seeds.

"Well, she certainly doesn't _love_ him, does she now, Moony?" Sirius muttered with a sharp note of bitterness in his voice, and Sirius knew he had said what had undoubtedly been plaguing James's mind that very second.

Looking miserable and defeated, James was rather content to spend the remainder of the class with his head buried under his arms, while Peter, fearfully unsure of how to share his input with the rest of the group, attempted to liven James's black mood by thrusting him a piece of sweating cheese he had apparently filched from his neighbor's plate the lunch before.

"Thanks, Wormtail. Really fabulous. Just... absolutely brilliant-"

"It was no trouble at all, Prongs! You know me, quick fingers and all!"

Sirius mimed writing on a chalk-board, "The... principles... of... sarcasm..."

* * *

Lily had been tapping her foot ceaselessly for a nearly an _hour_, her mouth a thin, hard line of disapproval as she stole yet another momentary glance from her watch, and quickly craned her neck once again to comb the bookshelves for the smallest glimpse of Douglas.

'I just spoke to him forty minutes ago! Where is he?' Lily thought urgently, twisting a frail wisp of hair between her thumb and forefinger nail whilst out of the corner of her eye, highly amused first-years took turns peeking and sniggering at her new hair from behind enormous, mile-high stacks of Transfiguration textbooks and Potion manuals. 'Do not hex first years, do not hex first years...'

"Evans!"

Lily instantly spun around, her eyes narrowing to slits at the nauseating sight of Agnes Bullstrode.

"Fancy meeting you here. Grown weary of the lavatory?"

"That depends," Lily managed to say calmly, resisting the monstrous urge to jab her wand up Agnes's raised nose, "Have you grown weary of MacNair's _u-bend?_"

Agnes reddened almost immediately, and Lily's lips stretched into a victorious sneer. Agnes still hadn't forgiven Lily for accidentally stumbling into the pair of them years ago, decidedly _disrobed_ in the prefects bathroom.

"We're we not in a library, Evans, the rest of your hair-"

"Spare me your threats," Lily hissed, entirely fed up of being taunted, laughed at, and whispered about, "The best they'll do is roll a disinterested eye,"

"Evans, you're a-"

"_Darling!_"

Lily was half-relieved to spy a nervous-looking Douglas hovering uncertainly behind the 'Effective Counter-Curses' section. Half-relieved because had he not appeared, Lily was quite sure she'd have pulled a 'Marjorie' herself, and would have probably lit Agnes's hair on fire with an Incendio charm.

Agnes promptly bit her lip as though to keep from spitting out exactly what Lily was, and with an imperious twist of her heel, she angrily exited the library murmuring what sounded dangerously to Lily like "_Filthy mudblood._"

"So…" Douglas smiled delicately, "How are you?"

"Spectacular," Lily crooned, reaching for his hand, "Now that you're here!"

Douglas nodded, looking oddly to Lily as though his mind was slightly elsewhere, and Lily, worried, slowly closed the space between them, shifting the legs of her chair closer to his in order to properly probe what was troubling him, "Something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing, just—I'm afraid I can't, you know, the date for this weekend—" Douglas looked evasively at the bottom of his shoe, "I don't-I don't think I can make it,"

"Why not?" Lily inquired fiercely, unable to contain her irritation—they had planned this date for nearly a month! It seemed very unlike Douglas to simply shirk off his commitments with her. He had certainly prided himself in keeping them before!

"I'm really sorry, it's just that my mates—they think I'm spending a bit too much time with you,"

Lily swallowed, aware that her own friends were complaining of the same thing.

"Well, we have been inseparable lately," Lily was forced to admit, squeezing Douglas's fingers as he looked at her with his largest, most apologetic eyes,

"Maybe we should hold off on the date until the next Hogsmeade visit..."

Douglas looked absolutely thrilled. "You're the best, Lils!"

Lily had expected him to kiss her on the lips but was somewhat disappointed and embarrassed to realize he was actually aiming for her cheek.

"I promise, I'll make it up to you!"

"Sure," Lily tried to lift the corners of her mouth high enough to produce a convincing smile, 'I know he's terribly excited to be finally spending a weekend with his friends but does he have to be this happy? Does he have to be-'

Lily abruptly shook her head to stop herself from finishing the nasty thought. She couldn't become one of those frighteningly possessive girls... the ones she'd seen numerous times in classrooms, in corridors, clinging to their boyfriends anxiously as though for dear life—ruining well-formed friendships at will. She had to give Douglas his own personal space or she would inevitably drive him away.

"I swear! I'll do everything I can to make our date wonderful, better than you've ever expected!" Douglas assured her as though worried she wouldn't believe him, and Lily playfully poked him on the nose.

"Believe me, Doug... I have no worries."

Except Lily Evans had nothing but.

* * *

Seeing as how very little was said about Venomous Tentaculas in the books, I only had a small definition from UnknowableWiki to go by. So no, I've no idea just exactly how big the seeds are, if they would fit in a vile, whether the vines themselves have teeth, or are spiky. So... yet again shameless free reign, I apologize!! I also have no idea whether Lily Evans took herbology, she probably _did_... but I had to give James at least one class where he didn't have Lily as a classmate, poor sod.


	4. I was born to do this

Once again, I own nothing you recognize. :) To those who have bore with this story up to this point, I must thank you, and commend you all on your tolerance, and kindness.

* * *

"So for the purpose of easing tensions, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was created by leaders from all over-"

'I beg of you stop,' James longed to cry out in agony, his eyes looking bloodshot as he rubbed them viciously for what seemed to be the hundredth time within the infernal hour.

Beside him, Sirius stirred softly in his sleep, his lower lip stained ink-blue, the "notes" he had bothered to take down earlier impressed on the hollow of his right cheek _backwards_ so that minutes later, James was rather amused to make out the words "Snivelly must die," and "Sirius is a sexpot," roughly with the aid of his two-way mirror.

At the front of the room, Remus noted their lack of interest waspishly out of the corner of his eye, a crease appearing between his eyebrows as he turned back to his desk with a scowl, and reached into his book bag for yet another fresh sheet of parchment.

"Yes, Miss Edwards?"

"Evans, Professor... about the appointment I explained earlier-" Lily prompted, raising herself from her seat.

With a great deal of restraint, James forced himself to focus on the horizontal tile pattern of the floor, afraid that if he even looked at Lily for longer than a second, Remus would reprimand him with a wagging finger, and educate him, yet _again_, on the finer points of waiting, and giving one one's necessary space.

"Very well, Miss Everett, you may go," wheezed Binns sourly as Lily finished giving Douglas a small kiss on the cheek.

'Where is she going? _Another_ disciplinary assignment?' James wondered, no longer caring if Remus caught him eyeing the back of Lily's head like a mooncalf. James could recall a number of occasions in the past where he had been asked to leave class in order to play mediator to two disputing first-years.

At the realization, James bitterly pushed his textbook away.

'Wish Lily would have taken me,' he frowned, kicking at his desk.

"Mwuh?" Sirius mumbled from his left, waking with a crazed twitch in his right eye, lifting his face from his notes as though in a panic, and James could see, with a smothered grin, that Sirius had ended up marking his other cheek as well.

"Lovely dream?" James asked,

"The usual," Sirius answered, shaking his head as though sand was trapped in his ears, "Sheep. Eating sheep—where'd Evans go?"

"Another errand, apparently," James couldn't keep the bitterness from pitching his voice into a low bass, and Sirius chose wisely not to press the matter further.

"The persecution of Muggles of course had it's roots very early on—_yes_, Allan?" Professor Binns snapped at Douglas's raised hand,

"Professor… I was just wondering if I could perhaps go to the lavatory for a moment,"

Binns looked none too pleased at this request, but could not find a sensible enough reason to refuse.

"If you must, Avery. I shall expect you back in two minutes."

Sirius suddenly snorted, to James's surprise.

"What it is it?"

"Doubt that he'll be back in _two minutes_, if you know my meaning,"

James shot him a puzzled look, and Sirius leaned in, his tone hushed, and feverish with conspiracy.

"Don't you think it's a bit strange that after Evans left, dear, ol' Adams suddenly has a hankering to go to the toilet?"

James's jaw plummeted a few inches.

"You don't think-"

"Same stunt I pull all the time!"

The stunt in question had been age-old, standard, executed, at least once, by virtually every Hogwarts student alive—person 'A' excuses themselves from the classroom with some vague reason or other, whilst Person 'B,' after an ascertained period of time, inquires if he or she can go to the "lavatory"—which was really Hogwarts-speak for some old, empty broom closet, or vacant corridor where the two would meet, and snog eachother senseless before returning back to class.

"Merlin…" James murmured, looking perfectly as though a bludger had just hit him square in the face, "Lucky bastard..."

Sirius stared at James thoughtfully for a moment, drumming his long fingers quietly on the table as though something rather interesting had occurred to him.

James easily recognized this look, and he felt strangely uneasy that it was directed at him with so much intensity.

"Prongs,"

"Yes?"

"Want to know if Evans really does snog Adams with her shirt open?"

James nearly choked on his own spit.

"You're mad!"

Sirius sat back, laughing, apparently amused by his outrage,

"Of course I am! Else we wouldn't be running around as animals every bloomin' month!"

James shook his head fiercely,

"We can't... besides, with Adams gone, you can't possibly think Binns will allow _another_ person out of the-"

Exactly where Binns would not allow another person out of, James never got to say, for in the next instant, Sirius had leapt at him as though possessed, and had punched him hard on the nose.

James recoiled, howling profanities, blood dripping onto his robes as he raised his head around at Sirius, and attempted to strangle the smirking git with his own tie, "ARE YOU BLOODY MENTAL-"

"Professor Binns!" Sirius wailed, seizing James unexpectedly by the front of his robes as though with the intention of kissing him, "Professor Binns! James is hurt!"

The half of the class that had been close to collapsing in their seats out of boredom had spun around instantly from their desks in mid-daydream to regard Sirius and James with great, combined looks of anticipation and gratitude.

Remus, twitching as though from a nasty fleabite, was staring fixedly at the soles of his shoes, while beside him a bleary-eyed Peter was slowly mouthing the words, _"Sirius is a sex…" _

"Mister Brown calm yourself!" erupted Binns, blanching a paler-than-usual white, "Explain the situation!"

"It's Potter sir... he gets nosebleeds when he's too excited!"

A number of students clutched their stomachs to keep from bursting into laughter.

_"Excited?"_ Binns sputtered as though he had misheard Sirius,

"Yes, Professor! Not his fault really, poor sod. No, _James_," Sirius cried, pulling James into a hug that felt insanely more like a death grip.

"Shh! Shh! It's alright, mate! Nothing to be ashamed about! I know... _I know_, muggle and wizard relations _is_ a fascinating subject! And the way our professor went on about it..." Sirius actually affected a blush, "I could understand why you were excited."

A tiny bubble of blood expanded, and exploded at the corner of James's lower lip, and, trembling slightly, he wiped at the spot with his free sleeve, less out of any real need to tidy himself, but more to keep himself from outright hollering, and joining the rest of his lunatic classmates.

"Professor, I have to take him to the hospital wing straight away!" pleaded Sirius finally,

"Very well, very well, Mister Blake!" Binns nodded briskly, as though had he not a class to discipline, he would have gladly accompanied "poor," "excitable" James to the hospital wing himself.

Resisting the urge to bound for joy, James made a great show of groaning on Sirius's shoulder, while to Sirius's left, Peter sat enviously, appearing to contemplate Lupin's nose.

When they had distanced themselves safely from the classroom, Sirius released his grip on James's side, and did not restrain himself,

"Am I brilliant? Or am I _brilliant?? _Go on Prongs, say it! Is Padfoot brilliant, or is Padfoot brill-"

"Well, a _warning_ would have been nice,"

"A warning!? And what would you have said, I wonder?" Sirius spat in disbelief, "Cheers, Padfoot, have a lovely go at my nose? Speaking of which,"

Sirius promptly fished his wand out of his robe pocket.

_"Episkey!"_

James's nose, which had alarmingly adopted the size and color of tomatoes, had shrunk, and paled to its original appearance.

James gave it a prod.

"Thanks,"

"So, reckon I'm forgiven?"

James smiled.

"As long as I'm the one punching your face in next time,"

Sirius seemed to be intent on spoiling him.

"Fine, Prongs. Shall we start with the broom closet on the third floor?"

James hesitated.

"Padfoot... what if... well, what if Evans catches us? I mean, I've already made a right mess of things-"

"She won't catch us," Sirius insisted firmly, pocketing his wand with a fierce air of accomplishment as though he had gotten away with this several times before, "Besides, she'll be a bit too pre-_occupied_, don't you think?" he added, nudging James with an overly enthused smile.

James thought he was going to be sick.

Repressing a sigh, James dutifully quickened his pace as he followed Sirius up three flights of magical staircases. Once they had reached the third floor, Sirius beckoned him to walk a little faster, "Ready?"

"To potentially spy on two people having it off? You joking? ... I was born to do this," James replied weakly, not entirely sure whether he should projectile-vomit, or tempt Sirius into a tittering high-five of mannish glee.

"Good man. I'll stay some five feet behind you, just in case Filch and Norris are around,"

James nodded to this, as though he and Sirius were engaged in some delicate, covert operation, and with a hearty thumbs-up, he quickly rounded the corner, wand held aloft.

Already, James could make out faint noises coming from inside the broom closet, which, to his open-mouthed horror, shook a little more violently as he came closer, dust dancing off the hinges.

Ignoring what sounded disturbingly to James like Adams's moan, James kneeled carefully before the closet, and attempted to steal a glance of its inhabitants through the tiny slit of space between the shut doors.

As though having been stupefied, James fell backwards on the floor, forgetting how to breathe.

Sirius had been right. Douglas _had_ pulled the stunt.

Except Person A was not Lily Evans.

* * *

**I wish everyone a 'Happy Reading' on the twenty-first. :)**


	5. You deserve to know the truth

Wow, it's been long since I've updated... which is usually, almost always, on a daily basis! I was away for a bit, on a vacation. Anyhoo, a lot of patience will be required for this chapter... it's a bit longer than the others, I'm afraid. Thank you, really, for still being here.

In response to a lovely review I've gotten ages ago, **queenofthefaeries**: No, I have nothing against the author Douglas Adams, or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I happen to be looking for a name, and lifted 'Douglas Adams' from a list of authors on the internet... yes, lame.

I own nothing you recognize. If did, I'd be filthy rich. :D

* * *

James scrambled numbly to his feet, his face white with disbelief, air coming in sharp, shallow gasps as Sirius, who had witnessed his momentary collapse on the floor, ran pell-mell down the length of the corridor, shouting, "Blimey, Prongs! You alright?"

James swallowed what felt unpleasantly like a huge lump of coal. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak, his head spinning as though confunded, pounding insistently with what he just saw—with what he had seen days before—Lily crying weakly with her fingers crumpled at her puckered mouth, Lily's shoulders shaking... and then, as though his mind could not help itself, James saw, with a sickening twist in his stomach, the way Lily's smile widened whenever she caught a passing glimpse of Douglas in the Great Hall, the spring in her step as she ran up, screaming, to hold him at the end of every breakfast feast.

'I'm going to make that bastard, pay,' James seethed through clenched teeth, slamming his fist hard on the closet door, so that he heard, with a sneering satisfaction, the high squeal of Roberta Bowles.

With a bewildered howl of, 'Prongs, what d'you think you're doing?' from Sirius, James raised his wand purposefully, and stabbed at the air, bellowing in a voice nearly inarticulate with fury, "Reducto!"

It was as though a giant canon ball had shot straight through the heart of the broom closet, shattering the ancient wood into a million, indefinable pieces, showering James in a blindingly thick, almost impenetrable haze of fat, choking dust.

Roberta and Douglas fell apart from each other's embrace.

"Merlin, I don't believe it," Sirius's wand-hand fell limp at his side, the expression on his face an odd cross between disbelief, and—James couldn't believe it—jealousy?

"Douglas Adams—and _Roberta Bowles?_"

Roberta shifted her gaze warily from James to Sirius, doing-up the buttons to her shirt with startling efficiency, while Douglas, to James's contempt, regarded them both with a cool, withering look as though he had spotted two rather irksome flies.

"Impedi-" Douglas began in a roar, his wand emerging swiftly from his cloak pocket, but James stood too close to him, and with a scathing laugh, he kicked viciously at Douglas's wand, sending it flying with a harsh clank against a neighbouring wall.

A horrified scream left Roberta's quivering mouth, and Douglas did not think twice. Painfully aware of his defencelessness, he lunged at James head first, snarling, forcing James into a thrashing heap on the flagged-stone floor.

"I'm going to kill you!" James howled savagely, trying with all his mustered strength to push the crushing weight of Douglas off him, "Incarcerous!"

Thin, dark ropes erupted with a bang from the end of James's wand, twisting themselves furiously around Douglas like bloodthirsty serpents.

"You don't want to do this, Potter…" Douglas's voice was dripping acid, betraying any trace of humiliation at having to peer up at James, bound in ropes, from the floor,

"Just one of the many things you're disastrously wrong about, Adams," James spat out his name as though it were marmite,

"I'll tell Lily, you know..." Douglas whispered to him in a low, menacing voice,

"You will? And tell her _what?_" James hissed, speaking so violently his spit flew, "That you stuck your tongue down Roberta's throat? No. I'm afraid the pleasure will be all mine-"

Douglas gave a cruel laugh, "You're even thicker than I thought!"

James tightened the grip on his wand. "Care to repeat that?"

Douglas shot him an exceptionally contemptuous glare.

"D'you honestly think Lily will believe you?"

James froze.

"Lily would know I was telling the truth," James spoke with decidedly more confidence than he felt, and Douglas was easily aware of it.

"Will she?" he whispered softly, a hideous sort of pleasure clouding his eyes as he watched James's face fall, crumple, "Or will she refuse to trust the word of the boy who humiliated her in front of the entire school? Refuse to trust the word of the boy who she's hated for nearly seven years-"

"That's enough!" snarled Sirius, looking angrier than James had ever seen him, the tip of his wand meeting Douglas's forehead, "Nobody speaks to James that way!"

Before Douglas could open his mouth to speak, several doors swung open from beyond the corridor, and students, in chattering groups of three and four, happily exited their classrooms with book bags swaying beneath their arms.

Sirius withdrew his wand immediately, his dark eyes posing a murderous threat. Grabbing a wordless James firmly by the shoulder, he gazed unpityingly at Roberta, who sat, her lips opening and closing like a fish.

"You've stripped him of his clothes before, I presume? Inches of rope shouldn't prove to be too difficult."

* * *

Lily lifted her wand lazily in the near-darkness, her eyes rolling as she spotted what seemed to be her fiftieth suit of armour of the night.

'I don't even know why Dumbledore even bothers with these patrols, anymore,' Lily reflected wearily, lowering her wand to her waist, 'It's nearly been an hour since I started my patrol, and so far I've caught nothing but a bad headache.'

Lily furiously swept a stray tangle of red hair away from her face, settling herself for a moment, tiredly against a nearby wall. She hadn't received a wink of sleep the night before, and was now regretting not showing up for the dinner that night.

'Pragna was right—I shouldn't have taken those extra three NEWTS,' Lily was already worried about the ten feet on the difficulties of human transfiguration she had yet to write for McGonagall later that night.

With a sigh, Lily struggled to steady herself back into a standing position, releasing a soft cry when her hand slipped carelessly on the stonewall, earning a small, lateral cut.

'Ouch,' Lily winced as she immediately raised her stinging palm to her eyes for inspection. She had dropped her wand hastily in the process, and it fell with a tiny clatter at her feet, the soft ball of light dying completely from its tip.

'Great Merlin, Lily, get a hold of yourself!' But the growing dark seemed to be sipping what little energy remained in her limbs, seducing her with its absence of things, people—lulling her into the sweet, delicious comfort of sleep.

Lily's lips parted in a contented sigh, her back slipping noiselessly against the wall…

* * *

"EVANS! EVANS WAKE UP!"

Lily felt the heat of someone's breath on her face.

She realized she was being shaken violently into consciousness, and she opened her eyes weakly, not entirely surprised to find James Potter stooped over her, his eyes large with worry.

"Lily? Are you alright? Did someone do this to you?"

* * *

"No... I'm fine, just a little hungry," Lily managed to choked out, her eyelids falling close, and James placed a supporting arm gingerly beneath the slope of her back, lifting her slender weight against his shoulder.

To his enormous amazement, Lily made no attempt to strike him in the face.

"Quickly then, I have some food in the common room," James offered warmly when Lily rested her head on his shoulder.

Lily murmured something incoherent into his chest, and the tip of her nose gently grazed his neck.

'Bloody hell,' James swallowed, his pulse zooming into overdrive as he steered Lily gently into the direction of the Fat Lady.

Once inside, James settled Lily onto one of the stuffed chairs.

"I'll be right back," he murmured with an easy smile, darting quickly for the stairway that led him directly to the Boys dormitory.

Muttering a quick apology, James pocketed several bars of chocolate from the store under Remus's bed.

When he returned shortly to the common room, he was worried to find Lily's face buried in her arms.

"Here, have some of chocolate," James instructed gently, sitting beside her, tearing a bit of one end of a bar, and handing the piece to Lily, who looked up at him, dazed, lips pale, and forehead matted with films of sweat, and tangled hair.

"Thank you."

Lily chewed a bar in silence, and James was glad that she appeared to be looking much better.

"Er, I'm really sorry for all the trouble," Lily stammered after a while, refusing to look at him out of slight embarrassment, James could tell,

"No trouble at all," James replied, much more shyly than he had anticipated. He was more acquainted with Angry-Lily, he realized.

Lily appeared to notice, and flashed him a beautiful, rare smile.

"James," she began, and James stiffened noticeably.

She had never, in the entire time he had known her, ever called him by his first name before. It felt deliriously wonderful. He felt solid, more substantial, _real_... as though she had conjured him physically into being.

"About… about last week," Lily continued less awkwardly, clearly oblivious to James's internal hoopla, her hands clasped at her knees as she gazed up at him, eyes twinkling with the small, hopeful promise of friendship,

"You shouldn't be sorry… you had no idea, you couldn't possibly have any idea. I know you were just trying to help."

James was weightless at her words. He had the odd sensation that he was floating. The tips of his fingers felt curiously light, and when Lily kept smiling at him, looking at him kindly with her large, green eyes... James could not imagine being possibly attracted to another girl, wanting to kiss another girl as deeply, as shamelessly, as Douglas had done...

James's stomach churned with the duty of his circumstance. He had to tell Lily. It no longer mattered whether or not she chose to believe him—if he truly cared about her, _loved_ her like he claimed to…

"Lily," James started, his voice thickening in his throat, congealing like cement, "I have to tell you something-"

Lily giggled at the uncharacteristically grim expression on his face.

"Let me take a guess: you want to go out with me? That you love me? Don't worry, I already-"

"It's about Douglas." James cut in, and Lily fell silent.

"What about Douglas?" Lily enquired calmly, and for the first time, James had to force himself to look at her.

"Lily, you deserve to know the truth."

"The truth about what?" Lily was sounding truly worried,

"Douglas-" James took a deep breath.

"He's cheating on you."

Lily appeared frightfully ill again, white as a sheet, her eyes unblinking as she gaped at him in shock, her hands falling loose at her sides.

"How do you know this?"

"After you left History of Magic… Sirius and I-"

At the mention of Sirius's name, Lily's face immediately contorted with fury, and she stood up from the chair, glaring at James with the all the acuteness of a knife, all civility forgotten.

"I understand..." Lily lowered her voice into an icy hiss, "You'll have to forgive my scepticism, _Potter_, given what I know about Douglas, and what I definitely know about you."

James's mouth fell open in outrage, and he sprang to his feet, his face crumpled in a dark expression split between anger and hurt.

"Exactly, what do you know about me?" James demanded of Lily savagely, and Lily was temporarily silenced by the intensity of his glare. He had never acted unkindly towards her.

"You know," James drawled, his words dipped in sarcasm, "Other than I'm an arrogant, bullying toerag,"

His bitterness now at having been rejected, at having been humiliated, numerously with an endless battery of savage _No's_, flared up like a sudden, violent ember inside of him.

"You know very little, Lily... little about me, and little about your precious Douglas,"

"Please! What else is _there_ to know about you?" Lily laughed without mirth. "Other than your willingness to lie, to hurt people just so long as your amused! Just so long as you get what you bloody want!"

Something broke inside of James.

He felt insanely cold.

The fire that had been lit by the cruelty of Lily's accusations, was just as easily extinguished by the ugliness of her opinion of him.

He stood quite still, his heart thumping feebly within his chest, his throat feeling as though someone's fingers were wrapped painfully around it, denying him of speech, denying him of air...

In front of him, Lily was taking deep breaths, and despite her firm belief in his untruthfulness, at his decided fraudulence, she began to tremble violently, and she bit at her bottom lip, tears leaking fast from the green eyes he loved so much.

James saw now that she was desperate, she was mad with denial, and he stared quietly at her, dismay rooting him to where he stood... revolted at what he had done, revolted with _himself_.

Everything had gone so terribly wrong. He had not meant to hurt her, he only wanted help…

"Just stay away from me! Please!" Lily finally implored, and with a muffled sob, she turned away from him, running up the steps to the Girls dormitory.

James heaved a sigh that threatened to split his heart.

"Merlin, Lily... If only I could."


	6. What we do best

I literally struggled with this chapter for five days. I might re-write it... I don't know. Again, I thank you those who are still with this story. I got the idea of James's letter from Sweet Valley Junior High. The words in between the dashes are words crossed out by James. :)

I own nothing you recognized.

* * *

James awoke the following morning with what felt like a large ball of fabric crushed into his open mouth. He sat up weakly, spitting out what apparently was a mouthful of his bed hangings.

He gazed up at his bed, his mouth slack, and his round glasses hanging limp on the bridge of his nose. Needless to say, it wasn't his most _becoming_ moment.

It appeared that he had rolled off his bed like a log at one point during the abysmal night to the apparent worry of _no one_, and to the great bemusement of himself, because he could not, try as he might practically cataleptic, ever recall crashing on his left side.

"Bloody gits," James moaned loudly, hauling himself back into bed as though it were a pond he could promptly drown himself in.

_'Please! What else is there to know about you?' _

James could not help but cringe with pain at the awful memory of the previous night. He felt doubly worse when he realized that it was the second time in only a _month_ that he had made Lily cry.

'Tell me, mate, why is that?' James wryly asked himself, deciding for a moment whether or not he should jump off the Astronomy Tower later that evening, or just simply feed himself to the Giant squid, 'Because you wanted to help.'

But had he given Lily any reason to see him as untrustworthy, as _dishonest?_

James was not so far deluded to believe that he was a _saint_... he had, admittedly, been guilty of many of the things she had accused him of being—although, James sighed, thoroughly exasperated, 'I had hope she would have noticed me trying... I haven't hexed anyone for months now! Well-except for bloody Adams, who, as luck would have it, just happens to be her sodding boyfriend,' James conceded bitterly, considering the insufferable, cheating, lying, hideously two-faced berk to be the absolute exception.

'But what would make her think that I would lie to her about something like that?' James despaired, drawing his bed sheet up over his face to shield himself from the initial glimmers of sunlight that were now streaming in from the high, bed-side windows, 'I mean yeah, _I want them broken up_, but not like this…not if Lily's the one who's going to be hurt in the end.'

Before he could continue pondering the all-important matter of Lily's fate, the hangings on his bed were swept apart unceremoniously, and he felt, with a deep frown, the distinct weight of three people sitting closely to the left of him.

"I've said it before," Sirius simpered, doing a frighteningly spot-on imitation of James's great aunt, Lucrezia, "He does look like an angel when he sleeps."

Against his pillow, James stifled a beseeching groan.

"Prongs, we know you're awake," Remus laughed gently, "And no doubt waiting for the lot of us to leave so you can continue crying your eyes out."

At this positively unjust remark, James rose indignantly from his pillow, his face reddening into a furious shade of magenta.

"I was not crying!"

"Yes, and you didn't frog-leap off your bed either," Sirius put forth, a smothered laugh caught in his throat,

"I frog-leaped? Seriously?" James had grown impossibly redder in the face, his voice speeding into a terrible stutter. "I-I ha-had anan-an o-off night last night…"

"We heard," squeaked Peter with decidedly more joy than he should have,

"The whole of Scotland heard," Sirius attested grimly, "Didn't you hear? The Wireless has decided to pick it up for their evening slot: The Boy who will not get a clue! Agonize as an audience every Wednesday night-"

Sirius stooped to a half-crouch as James's dog-eared copy of 'Hogwarts a History' whizzed suddenly past his left ear,

"We thought you could do with some 'tucking in' in bed," Peter wheezed shyly, abruptly forcing a cough to conceal what James saw was his decided unease at having been forced to say this particular line.

James then spotted, to his immense delight, four, fat bags of what appeared to be magical sweets, no doubt filched earlier from Honeydukes when he had been asleep.

"Peppermint toad, or Chocolate frog?" Sirius offered, violently biting the head off a Chocolate frog with a contented toss to his head that recalled an eating dog.

James smiled.

"Frog, Mr. Padfoot."

* * *

"I still cannot believe that Potter would lie to you like that!" Pragna exclaimed to Lily minutes after the customary toast, and kippers appeared, her nose wrinkled in disgust as she carefully poured herself the ritual goblet of pumpkin juice, "Granted he's not an angel, but that is downright pathetic!"

"And desperate!" Belinda added, her tone haughty and clipped with disapproval as her pair of watery, brown eyes peered down at Lily from over the top of the morning's Daily Prophet, "You were right to put him in his place!"

Lily lifted her chin from her hand where it had been resting dolefully for the past ten minutes, raising her impaled sausage at them as if to rally, "Yes, I was. _Now_ can we please move on to another topic... something more _appetizing?_"

Quirking an eyebrow, Pragna set her goblet down, and shot Lily a fierce, suspicious stare.

"You don't believe it do you? ...what Potter said about Douglas?"

Lily swallowed, reddening at the sheer injustice of the question.

"Of course not! I know Douglas better than that! Besides-" Lily crossed and uncrossed her stockinged legs angrily, her lips curling into a distasteful frown, "When has Potter ever been marked for his honesty."

Pragna looked satisfied with this answer, and lifted her goblet to her lips again, "I've known Douglas for nearly seven years, a good bloke, he would never do something like that to you!"

Feeling like a complete heel while she did it, Lily shot Pragna a completely mechanical smile, glancing up from where she normally sat in the Great Hall to eye the noticeably empty spot James and his friends usually occupied in the mornings.

Rather than being overjoyed at his absence, however, Lily found herself feeling faintly miserable.

_'You know very little, Lily… little about me.'_

Lily shook her head, as though the physical motion itself would completely rid her skull of James _bloody_ Potter.

Though she had been very exhausted last night, what with the hour she had spent weeping artlessly into the old well of her pillow, and the other hour she had devoted to finishing McGonagall's vile essay… there had been something about the expression on James's face when she had told him what a lying, selfish, bullying prat he was that kept her mercilessly awake, wracked with guilt, for hours, and hours on end...

"_Lily_," Belinda prompted, clearly not for the first time.

"Yes, Bel?" Lily responded apologetically, issuing Belinda a tiny smile,

"Are you alright?" Belinda frowned,

"Brilliant, why?"

"You've been waving that sausage around…"

"Oh, right!" Lily wanted to smack herself, "Just cooling it! You know they really make them too hot these days! Terribly unsafe!"

'Smooth, Lils, smoooooth,' Lily thought dryly, taking in Belinda's worried look. She couldn't blame her friend. She sighed as she forced herself to finish off the cool remains of her sausage.

'James lied to you Lily, he lied to you, you should forget about him,' and yet, somehow, Lily was finding it increasingly difficult to believe in her heart of hearts that James Potter would actually lie to her.

In fact, ironically enough, it was easier to believe that her boyfriend was _cheating_ on her!

Lily had to admit, the notion wasn't entirely out of the question—ever since Douglas had promised her the date of her life, it almost appeared as though the boy was taking great pains to avoid her, spending nearly all of his free time with his friends, whom, interestingly enough, she had chanced to see four or five times by the lake without him. And yes, Douglas was a seventh-year student like herself, and as such was no doubt suffering under the same amount of workload—_still_.

It didn't explain the hollow expression on his face when she leaned up, on the tips of her toes to kiss him on the cheek, the unusual weight of his hands whenever she held them tightly in her own, the blank look in his eyes whenever she'd ask him a question about his day.

Lily pushed her plate away from her, feeling slightly queasy.

To both Belinda and Pragna's surprise, Lily stood and excused herself from the table.

"I'm going to look for Douglas."

* * *

**Letter to Lily Evans from Douglas Adams (written by James Potter in the School Library.)**

_-My dearest Lily pod- _

_-My Lilykins- _

_-Lily- _

_My lovely flower Lily,_

_It has come to my attention that I am a foul, loathsome, and beastly little git, and thus, am not deserving of someone as beautiful, charming, smart, kind, and funny as you, etc._

_Now, it's simply unfair, unreasonable, and idiotic for you to keep going out with someone who -is ugly- cannot fulfill your needs, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically._

_So for your sake, we are now officially broken up. -Cheers.- _

_I am confident that you will find someone else who can make you so much happier than I could ever make you -physically.- _

_-Who knows? Maybe you've already crossed paths with this highly desirable, witty, bespectacled, black-haired gentleman. Maybe he's someone who's changed for the better, someone who, perhaps, you've rejected in the past... multiple times, for whatever reason, I cannot fathom... something to do with your being insufferably stubborn, and refusing to admit that you are, in fact, madly in love with him, and nothing more would fulfill you in life than to snog him senseless up against a wall whenever the opportunity presents itself. Which would be a lot, he is delighted to let you know. On the ground would be perfectly fine as well.-_

_Please don't let a tear fall from those beautiful -jade- -peridot- emerald eyes. Just be content with the time we've shared together, my darling._

_-Love,-_

_From,_

_Douglas Adams._

James glanced up breathlessly from his thirty-minutes worth of work, looking (if not slightly weary,) incredibly pleased with himself. He took up his sugar quill again, and sucked the tip, already half-considering crossing out '_my darling_' from the bottom paragraph with a tiny frown when Remus, from his immediate left, prompted him with a sudden question,

"Er, Prongs?"

James met Remus's puzzled look from over the top of his outstretched parchment.

"Yes, Moony?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong… but are you _jotting down notes?_"

Immediately, James could see how Remus had fallen under the impression: beneath Lily's letter laid his copy of _Wizarding through the Ages: An Extensive History_ opened, for whatever reason, on page three-hundred-and-thirty-nine.

James smiled easily, cocking his head.

"I'll be jotting down notes, Moony, when Snivelly manages to bang himself a girl,"

Remus looked positively affronted with this reply, and appeared to be biting back the beginnings of a stern reprimand, "Now-"

"Which is to say never," James finished nastily, slamming his book shut with a loud snort.

"While I wholeheartedly agree," yawned Sirius loudly, looking absolutely miserable at Remus's idea of an amusing evening, "You," he pointed at James as he straightened up in his seat, grinning, "-Haven't been doing any better."

Unaffected, James beamed. "Haven't been doing any better, _so far_. That, my friends, is easily changed,"

James dangled his letter proudly in front of them, "This is the solution to all my problems!"

Doubtful, Sirius leaned forward, immediately sputtering "Lily pod?" in a tone of great amusement as he scanned the bit of parchment James had thrust eagerly under his nose.

Before James knew it, Sirius had turned purple in the face, shoulders shaking as though with the huge effort to keep from laughing outright. They were in the library after all.

"What!? What is it?" James demanded, red with indignation as he quickly pulled his letter away from Sirius.

"Prongs-" Sirius shook his head, tears crowding his eyes, "You've gone mad!"

"Can I take a look at that?" Remus implored almost immediately, his lips a fully formed smile, and James shook his head, glaring at Sirius as though with the hope of disembowelling him,

"What is so _stupid_ about my letter?"

Seeing that James was actually serious, Sirius choked on his disbelief.

"Prongs! You can't possibly think of giving that to Lily, _desperate as you are_," Sirius added, waving an airy hand, and James rolled his eyes.

"You see," Sirius ploughed on, setting both his elbows on the table with exaggerated care, "She'd just take it to Douglas, and once they were finished laughing their arses off, she'd... well... she'd _kill you..._"

James crumpled his letter miserably into a wad, sighing a deep, gaping sigh, his hand deep in his hair, "What d'you reckon I should do then?"

Sirius looked as if he had been waiting to be asked this quesiton.

"What we do best."

James's face lit up.

Remus was aghast.

From his solitary game of hangman, Peter let out a delighted titter.

"Why, Padfoot, are you asking me to go out on a prank with you?" James batted his eyelashes, his hands clasped.

Sirius grinned.

"What can I say? When I see something I like, I go after it,"

Remus gave a shuddering sigh.

"_Shit._"


	7. It's bloody time we took out the trash

I was really hesitating with this bit of the plot.. as I know how very significant pranks are to every Marauder fic. It's a bit daunting really, as there are some very well-written "prank chapters" out there!

**Anyhoo... credits:** To You, first and foremost. Thank you for still being here, and I know I say that every chapter.. but really much appreciation on this end. :)  
To the movie Parent Trap, (yes I know, _odd.._) where I got the initial idea of the prank from. _And with regards to the prank..._ apologies for basically just yanking the riddle off DH. I tried to come up with something myself... but Rowena's riddles are both of a philosophical nature (i.e. phoenix before flame) where numerous right answers could be argued, and principally concern magic. It was difficult... I might come up with something in the future, but for now I'll go with the one from DH. I know, I wimped out. I'm really sorry.

I own nothing you recognize!

* * *

"Alright then, Gents!" beckoned James eagerly from the foot of the long staircase that connected the Boys Dormitory to the Gryffindor common room, his face split into a wide grin, "The coast is clear!"

"Well, of course it's bloody clear," Remus exploded from behind Sirius's shoulder, unable to smother yet another loud yawn from behind his sleeve, "It's ruddy three AM in the morning!"

"Well then!" James exclaimed indignantly, his brown eyes widening to produce an expression of mock disapproval, "Looks like _somebody_ woke up on the wrong side of their arse," he tut-tutted.

Remus rolled his eyes.

Sirius, and Peter snickered accordingly.

"Care to enlighten me on why we had to start this prank on such an ungodly hour?" Remus asked mid-yawn, his eyes looking distinctly glassy as he followed Sirius down the stairs,

"For the very reason you've just stated, Moony!" James answered matter-of-factly, adjusting his thick, wire-rimmed glasses so that he could shoot them each a very appreciative glance,

"And that is?"

"Well, like you said, this is an 'ungodly' hour—had to make sure everyone of them bleedin' ravens is dead to the world before we make our move! Can't have anyone bursting in where they're not wanted,"

"I suppose I see your point…" Remus admitted ruefully.

"As much as I enjoy these charming preliminaries," Sirius broke in, disentangling the Marauder's map rather inelegantly from his robe pocket, "Best be moving!"

Whipping out his wand, Sirius tapped the empty face of the map lightly, uttering in a voice almost shaky with excitement, "I-solemnly-swear-that-I-am-up-tonogood!"

It was as though the tip of Sirius's wand had been spitting ink: black, weeping lines twined in, and around eachother like shrubbery, connecting, and never separating, until the parchment was almost entirely occupied with dark markings.

James scanned the map immediately for Douglas's name, not surprised to find it quite still on a particular spot situated in the Ravenclaw common room.

"Under the cloak, then!" ushered James as he quickly draped himself with the Invisibility Cloak, under which he was shortly joined by Sirius, Remus, and Peter, all of whom began to look rather amused at the sight of what looked like their decapitated ankles, and feet.

"Blimey!" Peter muttered, looking very much astonished as he fingered the bit of the cloak that fluttered above his head delicately as though in awe, "Bit smaller than I remembered it!"

"Coming from you, Wormtail," Sirius began in a low whisper, almost having to kneel to keep Peter hidden in plain sight, "That says an awful lot."

Peter frowned.

"Oi!" Peter suddenly let out in a shuddering gasp that tousled Sirius's hair, "There's seems to be a hitch in this little plan of yours!"

Although James thought this to be simply ridiculous, _impossible_, strictly _out of the question_, hitch indeed, he ceased his eager march to the Portrait hole, and shot Peter a complaisant smile,

"And what would that be, Wormtail?"

"How are we to get in if we don't know the bleeding password?"

James lips broadened like a stain, and raising his finger at them, he pronounced, "Ah! But you see I did my research!"

Remus nearly choked on Peter's hair.

"This is a historical moment!"

James chose to ignore this little slight.

"You see, _Wormtail_, you have to answer a riddle to get in! Which is why we have-"

"Me for," Remus finished ironically, smiling a little before fashioning a look of pretend-hurt, "And here I thought you brought me along because you enjoyed my company!"

"That too, Moony," Sirius laughed, climbing out of the portrait hole after James, "That too."

Examining the map briefly under his raised wand, James was relieved to learn that Filch, and Norris were nowhere near any of the corridors, and passageways that led to, and went away from the West-end towers.

"Alright, follow me!" James pressed.

For what seemed like almost an hour, the four of them slogged past narrowly twisting corridors, and poorly lit passageways, their backs stooped, and their knees hunched painfully into a stiff curl, each of them often stepping on one another's toes, or otherwise ending up with a mouthful of someone's hair in their face whenever James felt uncertain, and paused to check the map again, making sure they were going the right way.

Sirius had just been in the middle of accusing Peter of apparently snogging the back of his neck, when James spied a tall, beautiful spiral stairway marking the end of the long corridor they had entered.

"I was _not_ snogging your neck! I'd bloody blow chunks first!" Peter _actually_ spat, as though his point needed further stressing,

"Margaret Dodge said the exact _same_ thing to me about two nights ago, and I don't suppose _this_ hickey materialized out of nowhere-"

"I do recall the gigantic boil you gave yourself in first year when you tried to convince us that Matilda Stewart from seventh year gave you a-"

"It was not a boil, Moony! It was just an unfortunately hideous hickey is all," snapped Sirius, truly astonished that Remus had been unable to realize this, "Technique does matter!"

"If you three are done," James called at them, already half-way up the stairway, cloak stowed away neatly beneath his robes,

Shaking his head at Remus's silliness, Sirius bolted after James while Peter anxiously fished for strands of Sirius's hair from his tongue, genuinely terrified that someone would actually suspect him of having snogged the back of his friend's neck.

To the boys' horror, the stairway was roughly the height of about forty giraffes. It was seemingly endless, winding up in a series of increasingly tight, and suffocating circles that made James's brain turn with it by the time he had reached the upper landing, panting furiously, his hands clutching the balls of his knees.

"Bloody hell, Prongs, these stairs are giving me a damn headache!" grumbled Sirius, with all the superior petulance of a child who was accustomed to getting whatever they wanted,

"And would somebody _please_ be kind enough to carry Wormtail?" Sirius added gravely, gesturing a wild arm at Peter who was lagging a good four steps behind him, breathing heavily, the thin, almost colorless hair dripping wet, the sallow skin a sickly yellow with exhaustion, "Poor bloke looks like he's about to have a bleeding heart-attack!"

"Product, I think," Remus wheezed, "Of all those nightly visits to kitchen! Don't think I haven't notice you packing on a bit-"

"I-I digest food faster than most people!" whined Peter, a furious blush rising to join the waxy yellow on his small, pointed face.

"Something a woman will appreciate in the future, I'm _sure_," Sirius snorted, quickly latching on to James's shoulder for support whilst behind him, Peter cried sharply, "Well, it doesn't appear that all that snogging has gotten you anywhere!"

"It's gotten me in Eloise Mitchell's and back, I'll have you know," Sirius sneered, winking, his hand extended kindly to Remus who took it gratefully, albeit with a sickened expression planted on his face that had strictly nothing to do with the stairs,

"Merlin, I thought Eloise was a nice girl!" Remus shook his head, apparently very disappointed with Eloise, and then, turning to face the entrance, he muttered, "Their porthole I expect, but there doesn't appear to be a doorknob,"

"There is a knocker though!" James pointed immediately to a small, bronze knocker that had been fashioned into the shape of a flying raven.

Swallowing a little, James lifted the knocker slowly, and then... shutting his eyes, he slammed it hard against the knob-less door, a noise not so different from a reverberating explosion greeting them once he did.

"Blimey!" Sirius shouted, throwing his arms immediately over his scrunched up face.

Then they heard something after that caused James's freehand to instantly jump to the back of his hair.

"Where do vanished objects go?" The voice was distinctly a woman's, faintly musical, and exquisitely deep.

"I like her," Sirius elbowed Remus, grinning wide.

At the question, Remus fell instantly silent, appearing to be in deep thought, his jaw clenching, and unclenching with strenuous calculation, as it often did whenever he considered how best to start a fifteen-feet essay.

"Everywhere, as with non-existence," Remus finally conceded, crossing his arms with a small hopeful look on his face.

"Well-reasoned," the beautiful voice murmured, and the door swung open like an arm gesturing one to enter.

"Don't look now, Moony, but I think the knocker fancies you," Sirius teased sweetly, wiggling his dark eyebrows at Remus in suggestion, whilst James, naturally eavesdropping, looked over his shoulder, and laughed.

"I must say, she's a real catch, that knocker—lovely voice and all," James put in, clapping a congratulatory hand on Remus's shoulder, "It's just a right pity that I've banged her as well,"

Remus tapped one foot loudly in admonition as James and Sirius nearly doubled up in a smothered fit of laughter,

"Just because they're asleep," hissed Remus, a prominent vein in his neck constricting, "Doesn't mean their _dead_,"

"Sorry, Moony," James managed to puff in a voice weak with laughter, "Couldn't help it."

In front of them, Sirius stood quite still, his hands set high on his hips as though he were posing for a portrait,

"Mates! (here Sirius paused for effect) It's bloody time we took out the trash."

James, Remus, and Peter shot him a withering glance.

"Padfoot, really," James frowned, appalled at his friend's childish behavior, "How many times do we have to tell you to stop making any more motivational one-liners!"

"Fine, you bloody tossers," Sirius sulked, pushing his pale lips into a fat pout as he swiftly followed James, Remus, and Peter on their quick ascend to what they all hoped was the boy's dormitory.

They came across another empty landing, this time, with several closed doors. James crept quietly towards the one that was labeled exactly like theirs in the Gryffindor common room: _Seventh-years_.

Pushing a finger to his lips, James took out his wand, twisting the brass doorknob gently behind him. The knob gave a soft, lingering click, and the door opened quite easily when James chanced to set a careful foot beyond it.

The dormitory was filled with the sound of many people snoring softly, a pale, bluish light streaming into the large room from the high, round windows that were a common feature on every wall.

In the near darkness, James spotted Douglas easily on the bed to his left, Douglas's long, gaunt face lying comfortably on one side, rising and falling steadily with his muffled breath, his stomach flat against the strewn bed sheets, his pale feet dangling off the edge.

James nodded to Remus at once, who dutifully lifted his wand, and knit his eyebrows as though in deep concentration.

A pair of fat, red earmuffs suddenly appeared over Douglas's head.

Quick at work, Sirius yanked the blankets off Douglas's back. He tossed them unceremoniously to the floor, taking care to wipe the bottom of his shoes on them before joining Remus and Peter silently by the moonlit doorway.

His brow cut in concentration, James fluidly brandished his wand, his mind ringing forcefully with, "Wingardium Leviosa!"

As though an invisible pack of house-elves had raised him into the air, Douglas rose instantly from his bed, his long arms hanging eerily over James as though with the secret wish of throttling him.

With James helplessly at the rear, and Peter serving watch at the front, the four of them slowly exitted the Ravenclaw common room.

For the most part, Sirius had to hold James stiffly by the shoulders to keep his friend from tripping all over himself, so nervous he was, or falling over the occasional stuffy armchair in his haste. James, and this was _crucial_, had to keep his eyes on Douglas entirely: if Douglas so much as rubbed up against the wall accidentally, James thought with a twisting colon, they were all _done for_.

The circular staircase, in particular, was, as Sirius had pointed out unnecessarily to James on the way down, "absolute _murder_."

At one point, James—with his eyes apparently still fixed on Douglas—had actually missed a step on the way down, and promptly tripping on his school robes in what closely resembled a lopsided pirouette, had practically catapulted himself into the unknowing arms of Sirius, where in a second, he was roughly joined by a heavy Douglas, who, thank Merlin, found Sirius apparently cushy enough that there appeared to be no protest.

Finally reaching the delicious cool of the moonlit grounds, Sirius ran to assist both Remus and Peter with one of the small boats ordinarily employed by the school to carry stunned, wide-eyed first-years to the castle.

The boat that they had indiscriminately selected was still dripping with the black paint they had used hours earlier to write _SS ARSEMONGER_, in thick, weepy letters on the side.

Taking a huge gulp of air, James lowered Douglas earnestly into the boat; feet first, with the head last.

With barely stifled snickers, the four of them wrenched the boat carelessly to the water's edge, leaving deep, gouging drag marks on the pristine grass.

"Padfoot," prompted James, Remus, and Peter all together with large, identical smiles on their faces once they've reached the rippling water's edge, drenched completely in sweat, but blissful regardless.

"What is it you sods?"

Sirius happily swept the illuminated hair out of his eyes, his handsomeness pronounced easily by the intimate light of the three-quarter moon.

"It's bloody time we took out the trash."


	8. Takes one to know one

Nothing much happens in this chapter, I'm really sorry. I'm expecting this will be the second to the last chapter... not sure, yet.

**For the reviews I received last week:** I cannot even tell you how grateful I am. Thank you, thank you so much, for still being here. :) I know I don't deserve them, but as many fanfiction writers have said before me, reviews are truly uplifting.

And to **ashley**, I sincerely doubt that I put you le/jp story to shame. But that was an incredibly sweet thing to say. You'll have to give me a link.

Once again, I own nothing you recognize.

* * *

"Lily! Over here!"

A thin, brown-haired girl with over-bright eyes called to Lily loudly from beneath the thick, draping branches of a large beech tree, her right hand raised at Lily in a warm hello.

Eleven-year-old Lily Evans, clad smartly in smooth, pressed robes, trotting about in shiny, black shoes, immediately broke into a wild, breathless run at the sight of her new friend, Belinda Carmichael, her brilliant red hair flying behind her in long, elaborate plaits.

Belinda flashed Lily a keen smile, her two small dimples showing.

"Liking the view?" She crooned, nudging Lily eagerly with her shoulder.

With a small, piercing squeal, Lily sighted a group of seventh-year Gryffindors milling about happily on a small patch of grass to her left, some sitting, others standing with their arms folded casually, all laughing violently at something apparently really amusing.

Lily clutched at her chest, eyes skyward. After a minute or so, she let out a sigh heavy with longing.

"Andrew Spellman is so dishy!" Lily simpered, gazing back at Belinda, a dreamy, far-away look in her big, green eyes as she leaned in close to her friend, and asked in a hopeful whisper, "D'you think he'll notice my braids?"

Lily held them out to Belinda proudly for inspection.

"They look fabulous!" Another girl, with very straight, inky-black hair nodded quickly in appreciation. She was sitting right next to Belinda, and her large, almond-coloured eyes brightened as she murmured, "You should wear it like that more often!"

"You know, I think he actually smiled at me in the corridor today!" bragged Lily, grinning.

Every once in a while, she would look over her shoulder optimistically at a tall, lean boy with dramatic, wavy, brown hair, and a wide, lopsided smile.

"I think I should introduce myself soon!" Lily proposed, fiddling nervously with the silk, navy-blue ribbons on her braids.

"Oh, did Belinda tell you?" Pragna was eyeing Belinda with an impish smile,

"Oh, Pragna, don't..." Belinda shot Pragna a long, pleading look.

"She said 'hi,' to Sirius Black in the common room today!" Pragna proclaimed in an undertone, suffering an almost immediate elbow to the stomach from Belinda.

With what seemed like enormous effort, Lily dragged her eyes away from a smiling Andrew Spellman, swinging about fiercely to glare at her friend.

"Oh, Bel, really, not him!" Lily shook her head in disgust,

"He's funny!" Belinda argued, frustrated, not for the first time, at Lily's great disapproval of Black. She twiddled her fingers anxiously, her eyes fixed on the grass.

"And he's good-looking, isn't he?"

"He's an arrogant little git, that's what he is," Lily put in coolly, playing with one of her braids with a nose thrust high in the air, "And that friend of his, Parker,"

"Potter," giggled Pragna,

"_Potter_," repeated Lily with an expression that looked like she'd just tasted something foul in her mouth, "Thinks he has the right to poke fun at anyone he pleases! He made Patricia Kinnebrook, cry remember? Made horrible fun of her glasses! Like his are so bloody _wonderful_,"

"Lils, that was nearly a month ago!" Belinda groaned, picking on a blade of grass, "And besides we found out later that he actually fancied her,"

"Can't help feeling sorry for the girl really," Lily clicked her tongue, and Belinda, and Pragna exchanged brief, knowing looks.

"Merlin's pants! It's him," Belinda cried all of a sudden, tugging on Pragna's arm fiercely as though aiming to pull it off, "It's him, it's Black!"

As though Belinda had informed her that it was suddenly raining out, Lily frowned.

Looking sideways, Lily instantly spotted a beaming Sirius Black, and his best friend, James Potter, ambling over, it seemed, to where they were sitting.

Lily flashed them her most disinterested stare, before returning her attention back to her braids.

"All right, Carmichael?" Sirius shouted, sweeping his long, dark hair out of his eyes. Lily almost gagged at Belinda's positively star-struck expression.

"All right, you?" Belinda breathed, as though unsure whether or not she was dreaming. Pragna pinched her, snickering.

James noticed Lily at once, and smiled.

"How's your friend? The one with the greasy hair? _Snivelly_," James laid a delicate stress on the word.

Lily immediately looked up at him in outrage, wincing.

"His name is Severus, and since when did you bloody give a toss?"

"Since pretty Lily Evans is friends with him," James sang, and Lily's friends giggled appreciatively.

Lily had to fight the surprising, overwhelming urge to blush. Recovering quickly, she threw James a filthy look.

"Oh, you're a charmer," She rolled her eyes, "Why don't you go back to hexing people in the corridors, and leave us alone,"

James's smile grew impossibly broader.

"I love a girl who gives me freedom," he smirked, and flipping her braids impatiently over her shoulder, Lily stood up, and growled.

"Go. Away." She hissed, the color of her cheeks dangerously matching the fiery shade of her hair.

"Not before I get myself some carrots," James promptly yanked both her braids into the air, "How much for two?"

Sirius boomed with laughter.

The seventh-years, including Andrew Spellman, who couldn't help overhearing Lily and James's amusing exchange, smiled approvingly out of apparent enjoyment, some joining Sirius in his laughter.

Lily's eyes shone with tears.

"I hate you, Potter! Just leave me alone!"

* * *

_"I hate you, Potter! Just leave me alone!"_

Lily shot up from her pillow with a jolt, her chest rising and falling violently beneath the heaps of heavy blankets she had piled on herself to keep out the cold.

Realizing where she was, Lily let out a huge gasp of relief.

"Just a dream," she mumbled, grateful, massaging her aching temples in slow, deep circles as she leaned back against her pillows with a tired sigh.

'Well...more like a nightmare, _actually_,' She reflected bitterly.

Lily raised her right hand above her, spreading out the fingers slowly, wincing.

"Bloody James Potter," She muttered the name with intense loathing under her breath.

Though the memory had happened nearly five years ago, the pain with which it seized her chest felt raw, immediate as fear—as though it had happened only the day before.

Lily swallowed, shutting her eyes tightly.

'Amazing how things change,' She thought in small amazement, remembering with a faint, creeping smile how long it took for Belinda to outgrow her fantastic weakness for Sirius Black. She lowered her hand stiffly to her side, bemused tears threatening to spill over her lashes. 'And how they stay the _same_.'

Lily threw off the tangled blankets, no longer in the mood to go back to sleep.

She stalked over to the closest window, where, on a levelled, stone panel, sat a tall, glass pitcher of water. She took a small, quiet sip, letting the kiss off the cool water wake her.

"LILY!" someone was shouting, fear crippling their voice to an anguished moan,

Frightened, Lily let down the glass pitcher instantly with a frown.

She wheeled around, surprised to find both Belinda, and Pragna gazing at her worriedly from the doorway, their mouths hanging slightly open.

"Oh, Lils! Thank Merlin you're awake!" wailed Pragna. Beside her, Belinda looked absolutely white. "Something's happened to Douglas!"

Lily hurried over to them, her forehead creased in a look of great concern.

"What? What's happened to him?"

Belinda threw up her hands.

"His friends found him on the school lake!"

"What?" Lily nearly screamed, her fingers closed over her mouth.

"Apparently someone had snuck into the Ravenclaw common room, and kidnapped him!" Pragna explained, shaking her head as though in a frantic attempt to make sense of it all, "Flitwick's trying to retrieve him right now!"

"We were just going to get you!" Belinda hooked her arm through Lily's briskly.

"But who would possibly-"

Lily stopped short behind them, her face stiffening. Something unpleasant had occured to her.

"You two go on ahead without me," She cut in fiercely, a steely glint visible in her striking green eyes.

Pragna and Belinda turned to look at her.

"Are you not going? He is _your boyfriend_..." Pragna was astounded.

"I'll be there," affirmed Lily, making her way roughly past the both of them, her face a mask of fury, "After I talk to a certain James Potter."

"Oh," Belinda muttered in a solemn whisper, as though she were mourning the dead.

Pragna took Belinda's hand quickly, pulling her down the long stairs that led to the common room while Lily trailed silently behind them, teeth gritted, fuming.

'Berk Potter. And when I thought he could sink no lower,' Lily winced deeply, almost shaking she was so livid, her slim hands curling into white, knuckled fists as the hateful vision of James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, rolling around in their beds, roaring uncontrollably with laughter crossed her mind, unbidden.

'But he's outdone himself this time, hasn't he?' And Lily couldn't help feeling a slight stab of disappointment for Remus, whom she always thought she could rely on to brace the reigns on his often unruly friends.

With a quickly murmured goodbye to her friends, Lily turned on her heel sharply, her breathing shaky, and uneven as she began to climb the staircase up to the boys dormitory with a loud stomp on each step.

After a sharp inhalation of breath, Lily raised a pale fist to the farthest door, knocking so loudly and obnoxiously it was as though she had hoped to stir the entire Gryffindor male population into waking.

It took several minutes for anyone to respond.

Lily was contemplating knocking the door down with a speedy Reducto curse, when Sirius, unexpectedly shirtless, groggy-eyed, and tousle-haired appeared sleepily from behind the door.

"What is it?" He mumbled, pinching both his cheeks into conciousness.

Snarling, Lily took a decisive step forward, her slackened fists twitching with the desperate wish to swat him in the mouth.

"I know what you did, Black! You and your pathetic, little friends!" Lily roared, drawing herself up to full height.

Sirius seemed to be almost laughing at her seriousness.

"James always did say you were bright," he remarked lightly, folding his arms across his lean chest with a trace of a playful smile crossing the long, proud mouth,

"Now, go on, tell me," He leaned in, carefully lowering his face to hers, a curtain of dark hair falling over his gaunt, right cheek, "Did he make it to the Scottish loch?"

"It's not funny!" She growled menacingly, closing the space between her and Sirius without fear, "Douglas could have been seriously injured!"

Sirius eyebrows shot for a moment to his forehead. "Injured, you say?" He arranged his face into a puzzled look, "Hm...wasn't our intention at all."

Lily closed her eyes in frustration.

"Tell your mate to come out, and show his face," Lily demanded in a fierce hiss, and Sirius's mouth thinned into a half-grimace.

"What? So you can yell at him? Sorry. He's having a bit of a lie in, exhausting night, you can imagine-"

"It's not up to you, Black, whether or not I can speak to him," Lily sniped shrewdly, arching a disdainful eyebrow, her hip tilted at an angle, her face burning, and Sirius cocked his head at her, examining her coolly from behind great, reproachful eyes.

"Oh?" Sirius's voice had dipped into a menacing, deathly quiet, the frown on his face deepening, curling like lit paper at the corners,

"Believe me, Evans, if it were up to me," he appeared to seriously deliberate the point, "I would have it so that James forgot all about you."

Lily laughed hollowly.

"How funny that we should share the same wishes, Black," Her lips bowed into a cold sneer, and a flicker of deep loathing flared in Sirius's narrowed eyes,

"Perhaps if you taught Potter the meaning of 'no,' that might be helpful."

It was Sirius's turn to laugh; a high, mirthless laugh that oddly suited him, Lily thought, wincing.

"Arrogant, you called me?" He spat, his voice an almost deadly growl, "I guess it takes one to know one, doesn't it, Evans?"

Lily gazed at him in horror. The notion that she was similar to Sirius seemed to frighten her beyond anything else he had said to her.

"You don't know me, Black," Lily's voice was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes wild, unseeing with fury.

"You know what I do know?" Sirius whispered, waspish, glaring at her as though she were a bit of dirt clinging to the sole of his shoe, "You're too much trouble than your worth."

The color drained from Lily's face. She wanted to say something desperately, to retaliate with as much indignation, but Sirius's voice had stung her utterly like venom, and she was paralysed, unable to move an inch, her mouth paper dry...

"This isn't about me, Black," She croaked evasively, her voice weaker than a whisper, "It's about what you four did to-"

"Wake up, Evans!" Sirius roared, laughing again, "It's all about you!"

He wrung his hands in a violent gesture of exasperation.

"Why else did we do what we did this morning? Why else would James tell you the awful truth when he could have easily kept it to himself?" Sirius gazed at her despairingly, "For you, Evans! For you! _All for you!_"

There was a hideous finality with which Sirius spoke the last three words, and Lily shrank beneath the enormous weight of them.

"But I suppose it's all a right laugh for Lily Evans, isn't it? No _Potter_, get a life _Potter_, drown yourself in the lake, _Potter_," Sirius was imitating her, cruelly, _accurately_, mimicking the exact way she spat those very words to James, with that almost ruthless, self-righteous pleasure, with that clipped, high-flown tone that seemed to show how much she thought she was better than him.

It was like watching herself in a television. Lily couldn't help being horrified.

"Douglas didn't cheat on you, did he?" Sirius shook his head, as though Lily was hopeless, "You must be crap liar, Evans, because even you don't believe yourself."

And with one last contemptuous look, Sirius stood back, and shut the door on her face.

Lily took a disoriented step backwards, her head reeling.

She felt oddly numb, and she groped blindly for the stair-railing, resting herself against it desperately as thought it were a lifeline.

'Black's right...' Lily rested her face into her hands, shame burning up at the back of her neck. It stung unbelievably to admit.

'I just… I can't _help_ how I feel about James… I've always felt this way about him… he's never given me any reason to think that he could be better, that he could change… until now,' Lily picked at a bit of lint that was clinging desperately to the hem of her skirt.

'Merlin, he told me the truth,' She shook her head dismally, appalled at how unfair she had been. 'He told me the truth, he did something right for _once_, and I treated him worse for it.'

Lily felt a stinging wetness prickle the back of her eyelids. Snot dribbled slowly out of her nose.

'I can't wait for him to grow up forever,' She heard herself saying to Remus only weeks before, 'I'd be an old maid.'

Tears rose in her eyes as an unexpected realization hit her.

'I'm the one who needs to grow up.'

For so long she had clung so stubbornly to a schoolyard grudge; she had let it eat away at her, had allowed it to twist her judgement, blur her perception—blind her. Blind her to the possibility that arrogant, bullying toerags can change.

Change into sweet, considerate headboys whose hearts are always in the right place.


	9. NOTICE

**NOTICE .. ER-**

It's been weeks (to put it mildly..) since I've last updated this story. I am _very_ sorry about this!!

I have the entire thing (well most of it) in my head, how Lily and James are going to get-together, what'll happen to Douglas. All of that you'll know in two chapters, plus the customary epilogue. :)

What I lack at the moment is time (school).. and well, inspiration. My writing has been coming out so bland it's laughable. Laughable in that my first attempt at a chapter is composed almost entirely out of dialougue. I've tried to right this. But in the process, I've gotten some of the characters ridiculously OCC. :(

For the people who've faithfully stuck to this story, I really want something special you guys can feel good about (that is the hope,) and well.. not something I've hastily done up, and settled for.

I should get around to posting an update around Thanksgiving, hopefully.

I know.

This was _too_ long. :S


	10. Grown back?

Oh Lord, an actual chapter!

And it is a monstrosity of a chapter too. I've edited, and hacked at it to death. Really, I'm just at the point where I cannot look at it anymore, or the words will start dancing in front of me. I tried cutting parts off, but it's still well over two-thousand words. :S

Instead of thanking 'you', I would really love to thank people specifically: **loonymarauder**, **nelma**, **fudge-butter**, **Richard Cypher**, **queenofthefaeries**, **TheCoolerJackie**, **emeraldeye**, **tm7**, **SuNsHiNe-FlOwErS**, **randommoment**, **Franklet**, **emma**, **ashley**, **IAMaMUDBLOOD**, **GypsiRiddle**, **DarthRoden aka Carl**, **Stinkin Sammy Jay**, and **martha edwards**.

Thank you for the kind reviews, and for still being here. :)

Two more chapters...

I own nothing you recognize!

* * *

"Moony, don't look at me like _that_," Sirius hissed, rolling his eyes at Remus's crossed arms, and severe, disapproving frown as he climbed into bed, and hastily threw some covers over his long, outstretched legs, "The damn girl deserved it,"

"That _damn girl_," Remus repeated acidly, gazing down coolly at the pillow Sirius had placed over his face as a means of drowning him out, "Has a name, _Sirius_-" (here Sirius roughly tossed his pillow aside with a snarl, and shot Remus a perfectly wounded, 'how-could-you-?' look,)

"And _feelings_!" Remus added, the corner of his bottom lip atwitch, "If you've the proper sensitivity to notice!"

In the middle of fishing his pillow from the floor, Sirius gave a wild, explosive bark of laughter, "Oh, then do forgive me, _Remus_! Between her insulting the whole lot of us, and slandering James, those 'feelings'-" Sirius laid an especial emphasis on the word, "might have escaped my notice."

Remus's nostrils flared.

"She was angry, mate! She-"

"She doesn't deserve James, that's what," Sirius finished dryly, scowling, "And I'm right sick of you always taking her side!"

"I don't always—!"

There was the lazy rustle of blankets, and both Remus and Sirius froze abruptly in their simultaneous attempt to wring the other's neck.

"What the bloody hell are you two blithering about so _loudly_ back there?"

* * *

"Miss Evans,"

Lily raised her chin immediately at the sudden address, recognizing, with a small, frightened hand gripping her chest, the strong, powerful voice of Professor McGonagall.

The woman appeared to have just woken: thin, feathery wisps of her dark, silvery auburn hair poking out of a slightly lopsided hairnet, the hem of her long, dark emerald night gown trailing behind her, making faint 'shooshing' noises as she gazed up at Lily with wide, noticeably pink eyes.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" Lily prompted, trying to sound distinctly innocent, and not as though she'd just emerge from a hot, and heavy encounter from inside the Boys Dormitory,

To Lily's surprise, Professor McGonagall flashed her one of her rare, faintly motherly smiles.

"I could see why you may be upset, Miss Evans, given the events of this morning-"

Professor McGonagall gently planted a slightly wizened hand on Lily's shoulder, "Douglas Adams-I hear you have a very special relationship with him,"

Lily almost wriggled out of Professor McGonagall's warm grasp, wanting very much to scream a particular word she was sure, had she been at home, would have thoroughly earned her a hearty whack on the backside from her mother.

Professor McGonagall took Lily's slight cringe to be nothing more than mere adolescent embarrassment, and tightened her sympathetic clutch on Lily's shoulder knowingly.

"But perhaps, Miss Evans, what I'm going to tell you next may help you feel a little better."

* * *

"What the bloody hell are you two blithering about so loudly back there?" James blasted, blindly groping about for the closest pillow he could grasp to him, a thin line of dribble trailing weakly from his lips as he sat up, glaring blearily at Sirius and Remus, who, for their part, looked as though they were trying very hard to burn a hole into the other's face by simply glowering murderously in the opposite direction.

Promptly retrieving a pillow—he had filched Peter's, and Sirius's not some three hours ago—James fished it out groggily from behind his back, and threw it, with all his might, at his bickering friends.

Sirius caught the pillow only too easily, his dark, overlong hair falling back into a sweeping toss as he did so.

"Pillow talk, Prongs," was Sirius's absurdly cheerful reply, considering the rather sinister vision he still had of gouging Remus's flat, accusing eyes with a toothpick.

He raised the pillow that James had thrown his way, as if to illustrate his point.

Remus's lower lip quivered, not from, Sirius was regretful to realize, affectionate amusement over his little quip.

"Wake up," Remus hurled the command at James so viciously, James was quite sure Remus must have spat on him.

"Well, thanks to the bleeding pair of you I already am, aren't I?" James leaned back sourly against a neighbouring bed-post, folding his arms lazily before shooting Remus a tired glance, "What have Sirius and I done _this_ time?"

Remus stiffened as though struck. He trained brown, reproachful eyes on James.

"It might just interest you to know-"

Here, Sirius flung Remus a warning look. _The toothpick... think about the toothpick, mate_, Sirius attempted to channel this promise of reprisal telephatically, teeth gritted.

"-that we could have very well gotten Douglas Adams injured."

_Good. Ol' Moony here might get to keep his eyes after all, _Sirius decided, smiling widely out of relief, whilst on the opposite end of the room, James processed Remus's grave comment with all the dead expression of a flobberworm... mouthing what had been said to him very quietly, and _slowly_ in an effort to better retain more meaning from it. It was _six o'clock_ in the morning.

At 'injured,' James practically shot out of his bed.

"Douglas, injured…?" He seemed to be on the verge of imploding...

"_Rock on, mates!_"

James pumped a celebratory fist into the air, to which Sirius responded rather inappropriately by letting out a terrific whoop of laughter, and Remus, not _surprisingly_, by heaving his deepest, most shuddery breath to date.

"We will not rock on, James! We will not rock on at all!" Remus moaned as though in considerable pain, his fists clutching large tufts of his unnaturally thick, chestnut-brown hair.

James made a slight disparaging noise at the back of his throat.

"I should certainly hope not, Moony, that sounds filthy."

Remus, who looked decidedly homicidal with annoyance now, scowled, and yanked his school robe viciously from the bottom of his bed.

Pursing his lips in a surly, obnoxious way that reminded Sirius a little too much of his haggish mother, Remus spun quickly for the doorway, muttering darkly, "Well if the pair of you decide, by some fantastic stroke of miracle, to be a bit more _mature_, I'll be down at the lake, with any luck, helping out-"

Sirius tried to raise a hand to stop him, "Come off it, Moony,"

Remus merely shirked his hand away, managing to slip both his arms neatly into the long, billowing robe he had hastily thrown over his head, "I should have never agreed to do the prank! If Douglas is seriously hurt-"

The rest of Remus's sentence disappeared behind the door he had shut absently behind him, and Sirius gazed after him wordlessly, a small, familiar disappointment caught in his throat.

"Come on then," He sighed wearily, as James finished shrugging into his own robe, "Reckon we should follow the uppity prat,"

James looked at him curiously, his nose wrinkled.

"Really though? What were you two yelling about?"

Sirius glanced at James sharply, then, for a fleeting moment, at Peter, who was still peacefully snoring beneath an enormous pile of blankets, blissfully unaware of what was going on around him.

_Lucky bastard._

He bit his lip _hard_, thinking with an inward frown that he couldn't very well tell James that he'd, just moments before, made the love of his life cry-even if it was, at least in his mind, _entirely_ provoked.

"Nothing you should concern yourself with, Prongs," Sirius assured his best friend at length, forcing his lips into what he hoped was a very bright, very convincing smile, "Friendly banter, friendly banter."

Before James could voice out his annoyance at being treated like he was bloody four years old, both he and Sirius stopped suddenly in their tracks, rendered momentarily silent by the sight of so many students hanging cheerfully by the windows, pointing, and laughing eagerly at something that had to be, Sirius thought with a pranker's excitement, exceptionally amusing.

The student closest to them, a spindly, blonde-haired boy no taller than Sirius's shoulder, was jumping fiercely up and down as though in an episodic fit, yelling at two girls who were halfway up the Boys' stairway, to quickly come over.

"Blimey, you two! Look! Some spotty seventh-year is having himself a swim!"

James and Sirius exchanged immediate looks of wild, child-like amusement; almost knocking the other down to the floor with the violent jostling of their elbows so great was their haste to reach the window.

The little, blonde-haired boy let out a rather bewildered, "Oi!" as James inadvertently knocked him sideways from one of the common-room windows.

James, a minute too late realizing that he'd actually hit a student, and not what he'd first assumed to be _thin air_, extended an apologetic hand to the whimpering boy, whilst beside him, Sirius, finally realizing what the entire bloody fuss was about, began slapping his knees loudly in amusement.

"Prongs!" Sirius cried, tears of hilarity brimming in his eyes, "You've _got_ to see this!"

* * *

"Oh, Praggie!" cried Belinda shrilly, teetering on the tips of her black, muddied shoes as she tried to stick her neck out as far as her ungainly body would allow, "D'you reckon his broken some ribs? A leg, or two? D'you think the Squid's eaten Douglas?"

Against her, Pragna shivered helplessly in the morning cold.

"Don't be so dramatic!" Pragna wasn't so much as rolling her eyes as she was thrusting them side to side so severe was her shaking, "And if you don't want me to start calling you _Belly_, I suggest you stop calling me _that_,"

"You used to like me calling you Praggie, remember?" Belinda's voice was faintly reminiscent,

"And you used to like the color _pink_," countered Pragna disgustedly, raising an accusatory eyebrow,

"I _still_ like the color pink,"

"Lord, where is Lily?" moaned Pragna in surrender, shifting her weight repeatedly on both legs in a vain effort to keep warm, "A bit awkward, isn't it? Notice we're the only lions around..."

Belinda cast Pragna a quick, sidelong glance, her smile one of uncomfortable agreement before she returned her probing gaze back towards the enormous crowd thronging the water's edge, a crowd that was composed primarily of sixth, and seventh-year Ravenclaws, with the occasional sobbing Hufflepuff interrupting the neat line of cobalt ties.

"I'm sure she'll be here any moment now—with a body bag, no doubt," Belinda assured grimly, gripping her scarf, and despite the slight discomfort of her chattering teeth, Pragna let out a hearty laugh.

"Body bags, more like! I don't think Sirius, and Remus are exactly safe from-"

"Decided to listen to your consciences then have you?"

Stunned, Pragna, and Belinda spun right around at the sound of the indignant voice, their eyes widening as they took in the rather unbefitting sight of Remus, Sirius, and James bounding quickly for the lake.

"Guess she only got to Peter," Belinda mumbled regretfully, confused when Pragna suddenly tore away from her side, and stood rather still, squinting repeatedly at the boys as though they were apparitions.

"Ah, Patil," Sirius beckoned, a large, playful grin pulling at his handsome mouth, "Decided to enjoy the show?"

Pragna purpled with outrage.

"What are you _three_ doing here?"

Remus, of all three boys, had the tact to look remorseful.

"I'm terribly sorry, Pragna... I didn't know what I was thinking, really, agreeing to the whole thing-"

Sirius's dark, fathomless eyes swiveled sharply to rest on Remus's face, his lids narrowing accusingly over the traitorous features.

"That's _funny_. I seem to recall you saying, and my highest compliments on your rather colorful use of language, 'Let's give that lying, cheating bastard what he deserves,'"

Remus blanched a delicate shade of white.

"Still on about that are you?" Pragna snapped, rounding on Sirius, her voice unnaturally hoarse with derision, "Frankly, you and Potter could have been a bit more original!"

"Frankly," Sirius broke in before James could get in a dissenting word, "Dougie could have been a bit more original—the broom closet, s'got to be the oldest trick in the-"

"Douglas did not cheat on Lily," Pragna's voice had risen dangerously into a full-blown tremolo, her tone resembling that of an emotional toddler who stubbornly refused to believe that there were no such things as 'Father Christmas,' or the 'Tooth Fairy,' "Your wide-eyed tarts for girlfriends might take your word for truth, but I'm afraid to say that we're not so easily persuaded,"

"You mean to say that you lot are just bloody mad about denial," Sirius appeared to be downright abandoning all pretense, his slight, handsome face suddenly refusing to boast its customary smirk.

Remus and Belinda, James saw, were growing increasingly stiff with terror. They seemed to be absorbed in the trodden tufts of dull grass that peeked mournfully at them from beneath the tops of their wet shoes.

Also several people, to James's rising discomfort, had withdrawn their attentive gazes from the lake, and were now staring over at them with eyebrows raised in annoyance, and with lips curling as though with the eagerness to demand what any of them were even doing there.

When James had finally raised his pale face to look beseechingly at Sirius, he was alarmed to find Pragna's hand raised furiously in mid-slap, deterred—not a moment too soon—by a joyful cry from the opposite end of the crowd, "It's Douglas!"

Relief twisting their lips into ridiculously eager smiles, Remus and Belinda instantly snapped their necks up to see who had given the cry, and the five of them saw, with decidedly _undecided_ reactions (Sirius wrinkled his long, arrogant nose in disgust; Pragna clapped her hands together in glee as though she were going out with Douglas, not Lily; Belinda gave a little, delighted titter of 'Thank Merlin!'; and James had kicked the air in front of him so hard, he lost control of his leg quite completely, earning himself a harsh, reproachful glance from Remus who was now rubbing his newly tender arse as a result of his hysterical outburst,) Douglas being led gently into the happy, roaring crowd by a very tearful, and doting Professor Flitwick.

"You will all be glad to know (here Sirius and James openly rolled their eyes in disagreement) that Mr. Adams is back in one piece!" croaked Professor Flitwick, his fat, silvery-white beard dripping wet with his efforts as he attempted to negotiate his way nimbly through the large, roaring crowd, "I must tell Dumbledore the good news!"

"Knew we should've just tossed his bloody arse in without the boat," muttered Sirius angrily beneath his breath, his hands convulsing into fists behind his back as he glared up into the low, grey sky and rocked back and forth noisily on his wet heels.

Pragna sent Sirius a murderous look.

Wrapped in a busily patterned blanket, Douglas emerged gaily from the thick of the crowd, beaming widely at his friends, his initally appreciative expression soon becoming taut with self-importance as he gleefully took in the throngs and throngs of people who had come to wish him well.

This lofty expression faltered considerably when he soon glimpsed James, and Sirius, glaring daggers at him from the water's edge.

It was clear that Douglas was about to say something very unpleasant, but was spared the pleasure of doing so when, all of a sudden, Roberta Bowles came hurtling from out of nowhere, launching herself violently with a triumphant cry into Douglas's unsuspecting arms.

"Dougie! I'm so sorry I wasn't here sooner!" Roberta leaned down to plant a small, apologetic kiss on Douglas's pale lips, and from where James stood, he could hear Pragna's tiny wail of '_no_,' before her hand had clapped loudly over her mouth with a fierce _smack_.

"What're you-" Belinda's heartbroken question was cut short by the sudden presence of Sirius's fingers on her right elbow.

She turned quickly at the contact, and looked up at Sirius with wide, glittering brown eyes that seemed to beg him desperately. When Sirius didn't utter a word, she collapsed against him with a cry so shrill, it was practically inaudible.

Douglas, appearing to relish the look of absolute agony on James's lowered face, returned Roberta's fleeting kiss eagerly, so eagerly, it seemed as though the two were rather intent on sucking the flesh off one another's face.

This resulted in many encouraging cat-calls, and cheerful whistles from his friends, all of whom did not appear nearly as devastated as either Pragna or Belinda did.

James shut his eyes despairingly, not quite believing that something so hideously unjust was happening, that someone as bloody lecherous, and proudly dishonest as Douglas was going to get what he wanted… get away, triumphantly it seemed, without a single snag—and while someone so fiercely trusting, so wonderful, someone so forgiving like Lily was going to—

"Dougie!"

James's eyes flew open. He must have gone mad, because it sounded very much like-

"Lily!" Pragna said, a little louder than was strictly necessary, the shock in her voice easily evident on everyone else's wide-eyed, open-mouthed faces.

Almost unconscious of having done so, James's right hand jumped instantly to harass the back of his hair.

It seemed as though the ground had stirred, trembling helplessly beneath the heels of Lily's shoes.

Apparently, every other male present on the cool grounds appeared to think so too, for each of them were gaping at Lily powerlessly, weakly as though they were all suddenly running a high fever.

Having disentangled himself with some difficulty from Roberta's arms, Douglas stumbled forward stupidly, as though in a deep, drunken stupor.

"Lily, your hair, it's-"

Five feet away from all of them, Lily Evans stood, her hands held loosely at her hips, one ankle tucked behind the other coyly, her hair no longer it's scandalous length of three inches, but devastatingly longer, coming to rest past her shoulders, and just above her hip.

She had also recovered the slight, longish fringe that tickled her eyes.

The effect was _startling. _

"Grown back?" Simpered Lily sweetly, when Douglas appeared to be no longer capable of speech, "A wonderful observation, Douglas. I often wonder how you come up with them."


	11. Unnecessarily hard

**About this chapter...**

I'm really sorry that it's insanely long! The first bit was actually supposed to be a part of the previous chapter, but was snipped last minute. :(

I didn't dream that this chapter would be such a monster!! It was by far the most difficult chapter to write. Dialogue-wise, writing-wise, everything. Certain parts of the chapter are in there completely by accident. I kept changing ideas, switching tacks... so if, as you're reading, you get a sense of this, I am really sorry!!

I've decided to end this fic the way I started it, with a double-chapter. :)

The Double-chapter (chapters twelve, and thirteen,) will involve James and Lily's final day at Hogwarts.

Again, thank you for the people who review this story (tenth chapter: **IAMaMUDBLOOD**, **fudge-butter**, **MourningBlade**, **randommoment**, **sunlightdust!**) An even **bigger thanks** for those of you who take the time to read it!!

As always, I own nothing you recognize.

_

* * *

_

It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them. **Joanna Field**.

* * *

"Lily," Douglas croaked, his breathing unnaturally thick as though he had just ran several, unforgiving miles, "I'm so glad you've come to see me, after what happened, after-"

Lily couldn't even laugh.

"Had I been appointed the task of retrieving you Douglas, I would have done myself the great service of feeding you in bloody, hacked up bits to the Giant Squid,"

This savage response yielded a loud, collective gasp from Douglas's friends, and Douglas was staggering forwards still, unaware of how incredibly stupid he was coming across. He shook his head dully, sending tiny, icy jets of lake-water everywhere.

"Lily, I don't-"

"Understand?" There was a sudden tremble in Lily's voice, and she bit her lip quickly as though were trying very hard not to cry. For a few horrifying moments of stilted silence, she stooped her head...

And then raising it suddenly, she shot Douglas a venomous glare.

"Would a snog in the middle of Binn's class, perhaps in a dark broom-closet better your ability to comprehend?"

Frowning slightly, Douglas's jaw tightened. A look of comprehension quickly broke out like a hideous rash all over his face.

"Of course, _Potter_," he muttered softly, contempt unquestionable in his voice.

Douglas's nostrils flared as he stole an exasperated glance over at James, who was watching Lily quietly, an odd expression on his face.

"Surely, Lily... surely you don't believe him? He's only jealous, he's trying to break us up-"

"You don't need to lie me anymore, Douglas," Lily insisted firmly, leveling a cold, almost dispassionate look at him, "About how you want to spend time with your friends, or about how you and Roberta are supposedly partnered for some class project, you don't have to," Lily shook her head incredulously,

"Because I'm done. I'm done wasting my time, trying to believe you."

And ignoring Pragna and Belinda's warm invitations for a piece of toast in the Great Hall, Lily swiftly turned on her heel, one of her tearful, green eyes catching one of James's brown ones, and in a moment that seemed to take up less than a second, she mouthed to him, _'I'm so sorry_.'

* * *

"James! James, are you bloody mental, mate!?"

But James didn't _care_.

He struggled furiously against Remus's astonishingly firm grip, yelling himself hoarse over his concern for Lily, "I've got to-what if she's? I need to know that-"

"James, she can take care of herself, she'll be fine-" Remus assured him through gritted teeth,

"Of course she can take care of herself!" James grunted defensively, kicking at the air, "But who says she has to?"

"Let him alone, Remus," Pragna suddenly demanded, and Remus shook a little from surprise, turning his head slightly to stare at Pragna with raised eyebrows before letting out a tiny sigh.

"Alright then," he mumbled weakly, releasing James with a small crash on the ground. James promptly yanked his robes straight, and was only slightly stunned at the number of curious gazes he was still receiving from the Ravenclaws quietly milling about the water's edge.

"Ruddy blighters," James muttered savagely beneath his breath, and before he knew it, Remus was clutching him again roughly by the shoulders.

"Right," he said rather seriously, fixing steely, resolute eyes on James, "Second floor, third cubicle from the left-"

"Wait, what?" James spat, a little bewildered, having lost track of the conversation mid-sentence with the sting of Remus's nails digging uncomfortably into the sides of his arms.

Remus mistook the discomfort in James's face for confusion, and looked quite incredulous.

"The lavatory, James! Where d'you think she's going?"

* * *

"Blast," Lily swore beneath her breath, screeching to a grinding halt as she heard yet another small, feeble whimper of pain pierce the general clamor of the second-floor corridor from behind her.

'Lord, Lily, are you planning on knocking out _every_ student you happen upon in the corridors?' She asked herself viciously, attempting to conceal her growing irritation by promptly issuing the rather winded eleven-year-old, whose right shoulder she had blindly collided with, a fierce, apologetic smile.

"I'm so sorry! Please let me help you with those-" Lily hurriedly tucked in the pleats of her school skirt beneath her thighs, and leaned down quickly to help the girl with her scattered books, and papers.

"Uh, _thanks_," Still white with momentary shock, the girl absently fell into a small, awkward bow before Lily, assiduously avoiding the eyes of anyone who happened to be watching as she stalked away in uncomfortable silence, the grip on her school books now so ferocious it was as though she had hoped to poke several holes through the pages with the mere nails on her tiny fingers.

Silently uttering thanks that this particular victim didn't burst into tears at her little assault, Lily immediately spun on her heel, and happily resumed her eager march to the lavatory without another word.

She knew she was being childish—really, _who cries in the lavatories anymore?_—not to mention odiously melodramatic.

She had so loathed it whenever her older sister, Petunia, dramatically resorted to into a great fit of sulking whenever she had been upset with her.

But really, she couldn't help it.

She, Lily Evans, was upset with _Lily Evans_.

Disappointed, too. Not just at how things had turned out between her and James—which had been, in a word, _disastrous_—but most of all, most unendurably of all, she was disappointed with what she had irreversibly lost in the process: a chance with James... a real, _genuine_ chance at being with him.

Lily swiped hastily at her soppy lids, having the dignity to blow out her nose on her sleeve once she knew she was outside the corridor earshot.

Merlin, she had mucked it all up, she knew.

'I doubt James will ask me out ever again, after what I did,' Lily reflected bitterly, a sharp sob desperate to escape her dull, aching throat, and then, quite astonishingly, she let out a harsh, resentful laugh in its place.

No.

'Nothing's ever quite that easy,' Lily could almost hear her mother proclaim sagely, the smile that had risen to meet her lips a small, sad one.

Because knowing James Potter he had already forgiven her, Lily Evans, for everything... knowing James Potter he would ask.

And for the last time, Lily also knew, trembling a little as she felt several large, hot tears spill over her lashes, that she would have to say no.

* * *

James was gazing anxiously at the filthy expanse of wood before him, the urge to vomit last night's smoked turkey, and honeyed ham rather overwhelming as he sat back gingerly against the squat toilet Remus had assigned to him with confidence moments before, and received an immediate whiff of what smelled horrendously like rotten eggs.

'Quite the romantic backdrop I've secured here for myself,' James wryly commented to himself, and would have laughed appreciatively at the irony of his present circumstance were it not for the great, twisting knot that was currently taking up residence at the pit of his stomach.

"Because you've always dreamed of telling the girl of your dreams you love her next to where people normally relieve themselves," Had been Sirius's caustic remark earlier at his little attempt for romantic spontaneity.

'I have to do this! Lily just seemed so…' James gripped his chin for a moment in an effort to put a name to the emotion that was present on Lily's face when she had quietly, very shyly apologized to him.

'She seemed... seemed... so _sad_,' James settled wearily for the insipid word with a little, noncommittal shrug, and he supposed he knew just _why_ she was sad.

Douglas bleeding Adams.

James strongly doubted that if Lily had happened upon him exploring the inside of another girl's mouth happily by the lake side that she would have been anywhere near as heartbroken, or upset.

'It doesn't matter,' James thought sullenly, kicking hard at a stray wad of toilet paper that had wandered in timidly from the neighboring stall to his left, 'If she needs someone to boost her ego, I'll be the happy sod to do it.'

And so for some twenty-odd minutes, James sat patiently in the foul, derelict cubicle, his palms sweaty, set firmly on his tense, _faintly_ wobbly knees, his brown eyes watering a little behind their thick lenses as they cast a fiery, purposeful look ahead.

Twenty-odd minutes _later_—Lily was still a no-show—James was beginning to find the notion of blowing chunks in a girl's washroom increasingly appealing as the horrid smell from the cubicle beside him seemed to strengthen ten fold.

'Merlin, and they say us blokes are disgusting,' James thought grimly, his nostrils paralytic as though daring not to breathe.

And suddenly, quite suddenly, he was spared the trouble of having to smell... well _anything_, having to breathe _even_.

Because in the next instant, without warning, the door to his cubicle slammed open, crushing his tilted nose painfully into his unsuspecting face.

* * *

'_Why?_' Lily wailed to herself indignantly, turning her wide, tearful green eyes accusingly at the filthy ceiling, 'Why is it that, some absurd way or other, I always end up hurting James?'

Lily _had_ felt blissfully relieved.

Having managed the final turn to the lavatory without much incident (if one would call tripping on one's bloody left foot, and meeting the floor with one's sodding right cheek an _actual incident_, she_ didn't_,) Lily was incredibly happy to have, at long last, reached the lavatory, and consequently, in her mind, solitude—or so she'd first deluded herself into thinking—and was so joyful in fact, that she had pushed the door to her favorite stall open with relished abandon, only to be shocked to hear a loud, terrific grunt of pain as soon the door swung forward mournfully, and swung back with a faint creak, revealing a swearing, very watery-eyed James, clutching what appeared to be a severely broken nose.

"James?" Lily prompted rather unnecessarily, horrified, "Merlin, is that really you?" she croaked.

From behind the hand he'd immediately viced over his bleeding nose, James mumbled, "Yeah," in an elaborately casual tone that suggested he had no idea whether or not she might react happily to his being there, or perhaps lash out at him for his horrible, annoying habit of never leaving her alone.

"Here," Lily muttered weakly after some moments, yanking several sheets of tissue paper from the small, lopsided dispenser on her left, not having a clue herself whether or not she should be very happy or terrifically angry that James Potter was here, in the very stall he'd driven her to, sobbing and storming, many times.

James took her offering gratefully, wincing a little in pain as he attempted to stop up the blood that continued to dribble steadily from his chin.

"Lord, James, here-" Shaking her head slightly, Lily took a bold, business-like step forward, and without much warning, yanked hard on the back of James's head. James let out an angry cry, choking a little on the blood that had leaked into his mouth.

"What are you doing?" He demanded sharply, sounding, if not slightly hysterical, a little frightened, as though under the grim impression that Lily was going to beat him,

"Stay still," Lily instructed him in what she rather hoped was a perfectly calm, and thoroughly reassuring voice, hoping to employ the same air of poise and authority her mother often did whenever her and Petunia were moaning on incessantly about some outdoor injury.

To her amazement, _it worked! _

The tight, almost vice-like grip James had on her shoulder slackened almost instantly, and he had stopped writhing restlessly in her clutch.

Drawing in ample breath, Lily raised the wand she had yanked hastily from her robe-pocket and bellowed, "Episkey!"

As though newly born, James rose slowly from her arms, a wide grin splitting his bloodstained face, "Thanks you, Miss Evans."

"No, er, problem-" And right then, Lily wanted to kick herself.

'Merlin, what is the matter with my bloody voice?'

Lily had a very strong, very disturbing suspicion that whatever it was, it most certainly had _something_ to do with James's face now being only inches apart from her own.

_Centimetres._

'Dear God, someone help me.'

"I've seriously got to start remembering that one," James said feebly, shooting her a very small, very embarassed smile, and again, her body responded quite contrarily to her will: her cheeks—blast them!—were now burning furiously as though someone had suddenly swiped matches against them, and her heart—_damn it to hell!_—was hammering so forcibly against her ribcage, Lily was rather surprised James couldn't hear it at all.

It was mad, really, what he was doing to her!

And without even trying _at all_.

"If you don't mind me asking," Lily cleared her throat nervously, swallowing a little before speaking again, "Exactly what are you doing in the girl's lavatory?"

"On the second floor, third cubicle from the left…?" James trailed off suggestively, allowing the faintest trace of amusement to cross his lips, and Lily heaved a small, weary sigh.

"I see," she murmured slowly in a tone of defeat, "Remus told you."

Lily flipped her long, red hair over her shoulder, regarding him shrewdly before sighing heavily again, "I suppose you're here to let me have it, aren't you? The customary 'I-told-you-so.' Fine," she grounded out through gritted teeth, "Hurry along with it,"

No sooner had she uttered the four words, did James, looking very much as though he was doing it against his better judgment, rejoinder inappropriately with, "_Lily, go out with me_."

Lily turned wide, incredulous eyes at him,

"James!" she choked out,

"Well," James grumbled wearily, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets where she saw them curl tightly into fists, "Why the bloody hell not?"

Finding his frustration with her oddly amusing, Lily immediately relaxed her jaw, and schooled her lips into what she hoped was a sincere smile.

And in a faint, thoughtful voice she had never, to her knowledge, used before, she whispered, "Because I like you."

James, who looked quite prepared to argue his forty-thousandth no, opened his lips stupidly, and closed them, swallowing.

He gazed at Lily as though wanting very much to reach out, and ascertain she was real.

"Wait…" he said at length, his voice no louder than a casual whisper...

"What?" he broke out finally, looking very confused.

Had Lily not been deathly serious about her answer, she would have, she was sure, collapsed into a small peal of giggles at the wildly bewildered expression on James's face.

But she was. She had never felt more serious about anything.

"I like you, James," Lily reiterated slowly and distinctly, and to her shock, James's look of confusion was replaced quickly by one of annoyance.

"I heard you the _first time_," James retorted with some impatience, furiously cocking an eyebrow, "I'm just waiting for you to make sense,"

Lily exhaled deeply.

Merlin, why her?

"Don't you understand James?" Her normally hard voice was impossibly soft, imploring,

"No," James answered simply, crossing his arms, and shooting her a frank stare, "No, sorry. Because for the first time in two bloody years I've heard the one thing that I've always wanted to hear you say, and now you're telling me that's _WHY_, you can't go out with me?"

Without really thinking, she hadn't been doing much of _that_ lately, Lily tearfully curled up her fists, and blurted out in a horrendously croaky voice that seemed more appropriate to a toad rather than a seventeen-year-old girl, "_You_ don't deserve me, James."

Lily had no idea what she'd intended to happen by saying this, but it was certainly not what happened next...

James had grown absolutely rigid as though she'd petrified him, the skin surrounding his jaw tightening noticeably as though he were gritting his teeth.

His eyes, normally bright as though they hid a particularly delicious secret, appeared strangely dead, _flat_ as they gazed at her, unflinching in their disbelief.

Realizing that he must have misconstrued what she'd said, Lily hastily lowered her burning eyes to the wet floor, and mumbled in a voice tight with shame, "You deserve someone better—

Someone who'll believe you when you're telling them the truth... someone who won't put you down because all you were trying to do was protect them..."

Biting her bottom lip, Lily finally willed herself to look up at James, "Am I that someone, James?" her voice was struggling clearly with the urge not to tremble.

James stared at her wordlessly for about a minute, and for Lily, it had all been she needed for an answer.

Only half-aware of what she was doing, she blindly lifted the latch to the abused door, exitting the cubicle with an aching sob she'd attempted to smother rather unsuccessfully with both her sleeves.

She had been halfway to the lavatory exit, rubbing empathically at her swollen eyelids, when James, having snapped himself out of his astounded daze, had yelled out, "I don't care, Lily!" just as a timid-looking Hufflepuff had entered the lavatory, and just as quickly exited, shock evident on her face the second she'd glimpsed James, shouting and wringing his arms over his head as though he were violently beating off invisible flies.

Lily was helplessly rooted to where she stood, a little frightened herself over his little spectacle, and James, having broken into a little run after her, stopped in a huff, so that they were standing a few feet from one another.

"I don't care," James repeated loudly, fiercely, the brown eyes he'd turned on her quite serious, and Lily's breath was caught in her throat.

"Well..." Lily calmly averted his eyes, "I do."

To her shock, one of the slim, pale hands she'd been staring at, unthinkingly, to avoid James's gaze was suddenly seized by fingers that were only slightly larger, longer, and more tanned than her own.

She froze, gaping at them with her lips falling open from surprise.

"You care too much, Evans," James smiled ruefully at the top of her bent head,

"And, listen... about the putting me down stuff... you were on the mark about _everything_. I _was_ a pompous git, I _was_ an insufferable arse, I _was_ a bullying, arrogant toe-rag and every bad, foul thing you've ever said about me-"

Lily shook her head mutely, hot tears starting at the corners of her eyes again, and James gripped the hand he'd seized a little tighter.

"The thing of it is, nobody every made me feel ashamed about it before."

"So," Lily let out in a shuddery croak, "you're saying… that I made you want to be a better person?"

James looked a little taken back at this succinct assessment, but nodded vigorously after a moment's consideration.

"S'exactly it," he affirmed confidently,

"That…" Lily piped up again, her voice still thick with tears, "That… I bring out the best in you?"

James was grinning.

"Oh, yeah, _totally_-"

"That," Lily gently ran the back of her free hand across the space beneath her eyes,"I was completely, utterly, absolutely _right_ about... _everything_?"

"Yes, everything. Completely. Utterly, absolutely," James was saying all this very fast,

"That... maybe, at this very moment, you can hardly wait to take me in your arms, and jam your tongue down my throat?"

James had had his mouth open at the ready, but before he could utter anything remotely intelligible, having only achieved an absurdly enthusiastic _'Yurgh-!'_, he backtracked instantly with a contemplative frown.

He seemed quite convinced that Lily was testing him.

"Er-" James shifted his shoes about him nervously, tracing circles on the floor, looking deathly uncertain,

"Yes?" he blurted, one eye cracked open, while the other was tightly shut, and Lily's lips broadened into a clean smile.

"Good. Then it wasn't just _me_."

James had barely a second to properly register what she'd said, before Lily, with a strength she hardly knew she had, yanked James easily towards her with the hand he'd been holding, and urgently met his half-open lips.

Lily could feel James tense considerably against her, his shock at her kissing him rendering him quite motionless as Lily, delighting with surprise at the warmth of his lips against hers, lifted her free hand almost unconsciously from the vicinity of her hips, and clutched the back of James's neck firmly with it. James's lids slipped close then, the one hand that had been gripping her fingers now rising steadily to his shoulder, placing her hand there, while his other hand snaked, almost unnoticed, about her waist, eagerly pulling her closer to him.

Lily could hardly believe it.

She was kissing _James Potter_.

The very same James Potter who'd made horrid fun of her braids when she was eleven, calling them _carrots_.

The James Potter who'd snuck Eloise Mitchell's frog into her book bag in third year, so that she nearly fell sideways from her seat in Transfigurations, positively shrieking with bewildered fright when what she'd thought was her battered copy of _''Transfiguring the Inanimate"_ let out a loud, reproachful "Ribbit"—

The James Potter who'd laughed at her unrestrainedly when she couldn't get her broom to come up to her hand on their very first Flight class with Madame Hooch, telling her that she couldn't very well be good at everything, it would be _damn unfair_, but that at least she looked mighty _good_ trying.

The James Potter who'd "accidentally" spilled an entire goblet of pumpkin juice on her shirt one breakfast during fifth year, insisting plainly that she took the ruined article off then and there so he could have it properly washed for her at the earliest opportunity.

_That James Potter._

The very same James Potter who'd told her the truth readily even at the risk of losing her.

The James Potter who'd put her awful, daft, _apish_, _inflated_ git of an ex-boyfriend on a boat, and left him, quite happily, stranded in the middle of the Hogwarts Lake for three straight hours.

The James Potter who'd sat, waiting patiently for her, braving the stink of rotting eggs, in a girl's lavatory.

The James Potter who'd continued to gaze at her... _still_ with that infernal longing in his eyes when she couldn't even look at herself in the mirror... three inches of dark, red hair framing her face, and thought she was still beautiful anyway.

The James Potter who "didn't care."

And as the hand that James had planted against her waist rose to twist itself playfully in her hair, Lily couldn't help thinking, with a joy that threatened to bubble from within her uncontrolled, that at that very moment, she didn't care much... about anything, either.

* * *

_"Several sunlit days later..." _

* * *

James had only thrust the door to the lavatory open about halfway—his hair looking only slightly mussed than usual, and his tie hanging at a very funny angle—when immediately, Lily fell back against him, screaming, looking rather shocked to find their friends, some with bits of toast sticking out of the corner of their mouths, caught in a complicated-looking snarl of limbs, and robes, thrashing feebly, beneath them.

"Told you I heard them coming," wheezed Sirius weakly from the floor.

Sirius, Lily was amused to see, laid spread-eagle on his back beneath an only just conscious Belinda, who, upon opening her eyes, turned an immediate, inordinately violent shade of red.

"Merlin, Bla-Sirius sor—!"

Wisely abandoning her butchered apology, Belinda raised herself hastily from the floor, affording Sirius a rather generous view of her shirt-front.

"No problem, really, not hurt or... anything—Ow!"

Sirius twisted his head about to glare reprovingly at Remus,

"The bloody hell, d'you that for?"

Remus carefully lifted his head from Peter's plump stomach, wincing,

"For being the dog that you are," Remus retorted savagely, and James, quickly appreciating the unintended irony of this remark, as did Sirius, burst out laughing wildly, much to the surprise of Lily and her friends, who, though having no particular idea why, began to laugh heartily as well.

Having recovered herself, Lily leaned down gingerly to help both a dazed Pragna and Belinda steadily to their feet, James eagerly returning the wide, congratulatory smiles that Sirius, Remus, and Peter all shot him in turn

"That's it, then?" Sirius affected an incredibly loud yawn, "Shame,"

He turned to face Lily,

"You made it too easy, Evans," He smiled wickedly at her, and Lily raised an incredulous eyebrow, knowing she'd been forgiven.

"On the contrary, I think I made it _unnecessarily_ hard,"

They couldn't help it.

They all laughed loudly again at _that_.

* * *

Response to **randommoment**'s review: _I didn't realize how confusing that bit involving Remus, and Sirius would be!! Again, sorry!_

**So for anyone else confused:** _Being the nosy friends that they are, Remus, Sirius, Peter, Pragna, and Belinda had all been eavesdropping on Lily and James's conversation with ears pressed against the lavatory door. James opened it, and well, Belinda and Pragna, who were the closest to the door, fell on top of the boys, who, consequently, fell on top of the floor. Sorry it was so confusing, really!_


	12. It's been a riot Epilogue Pt I

**Longest. Chapter. In the History. Of time.**

I've tried very hard to stay true to canon with regards to this story, but I couldn't help it. I just _had to_ give the gang their own little graduation! I mean, really. **SEVEN YEARS**. Seven years of school.. they deserve a little ceremony and feast celebrating their successes, hard-work, the memories, friends, what have you!

**So a few things...**

- _The Gryffindors (as with every other house) are seated alphabetically. Imagine my amusement when I found out James and Sirius wouldn't be sitting together!_

- _I would like to give credit to_ _**"Keaton of the FCHS Class of 2007"** for the beginning line of James's speech (modified it a bit.)_

- _I would just like to clarify, for those of you who happen to find this bit confusing, that an academic/graduation hood is different from an actual hood._

- _Instead of the "mortar board" (customary for us muggles,) the graduating class is wearing "wizard caps." For those of you who haven't seen the first Harry Potter movie (though I strongly doubt that there are any of you out there, just in case, lol,) it's just a pointed, black hat._

- _I dedicate this chapter to those of you who've yet to graduate from highschool. I wish you the best on that special day (mine, sadly, wasn't particularly eventful.)_

- _**CANNOT** believe I've been referring to James and Lily as sixth-years in this story. Will try to fix that right away_.

Again, I'd just like to thank the people who've always been kind, and faithful to this story. Whether you've reviewed, or watched LWHD, it just means a lot. **IAMaMUDBLOOD**, **Darkness-Killer**, **sunlightdust**, **randommoment** — thank you so much for your lovely comments on the last chapter! Cheered me right up!

To **randommoment**: Hopefully I've addressed the confusion you had on the last chapter (left a little explanation there.) Really sorry about that!!

Again, I own nothing you recognize.

_**

* * *

**_

_**June 1977**_

_**Boys Dormitory, Gryffindor Tower**_

_**3:17 PM**_

"OI!"

Stiffening with pain, Sirius drew in several mouthfuls of air for patience, glaring ferociously after some moments over his rigid right shoulder at a crouched, furiously sputtering Peter who was holding what looked like a small, bloodied pin in his trembling right hand,

"You planning on giving me tetanus, Wormtail?" Sirius blasted without pity, his dark eyebrows raised in a look of affronted disbelief, and behind him, Peter let out a distinctly dry, humourless laugh.

"S'not a bad idea," Peter mumbled acidly out of the corner of his small, puckered mouth, at the other corner of which was another dressing pin.

Remus bit down at his bottom lip hard in an incredibly strained effort not to burst out laughing at Peter's difficulty.

Looking rather like a bride on her wedding gown fitting, Sirius stood, perfectly erect, on top of a roughly improvised pedestal composed entirely of his, and James's school books, his long, slightly toned arms held gracefully aloft on either side of him, whilst a huffing Peter, who was now forced to stand resignedly on the tips of his toes at the additional height, fussed over Sirius's hood: a scarlet cloth lined with gold silk, identical to the ones Remus and Peter were presently sporting.

"The instructions," huffed Sirius importantly, lifting, and unrolling a small scrap of parchment before him delicately as though he were about to issue an important proclamation to the Queen, "Said _obtain assistance_, not, I believe, ten bloody poke holes to the sodding back. I swear I'll be half-dead from blood loss, come my time to walk across the stage-"

"Why don't you have James or Remus do it for you _then?_" Peter demanded menacingly, sounding quite harassed, blushing a splotchy, uneven red as the pin he had been clutching with his lips fell soundlessly, unnoticed, to the floor, "I'm tired of you lot treating me like I'm, each of you, your personal man-servant!"

"But you're _such_ a charming man servant," Sirius flashed Peter his sweetest smile, eliciting it's intended reaction of causing Peter to momentarily gag with revulsion.

"A word of advice," Remus cut in thoughtfully, looking amused as he propped himself up on elbows from where he lay, sprawled comfortably on the floor, with his head tilted back lazily on a twisted tuft of bed skirt,

"It might help loads, if you," Remus promptly gestured a baggy sleeve at a frowning Sirius, who, from his initially relieved expression, thought that Remus was coming staunchly to his defense,

"Stop being an arse?" Peter supplied merrily,

"-Stop moving your head every other second," finished Remus with a sharp, warning look at Peter, and Sirius turned away from both of them, scowling.

"It's my tossing hair," Sirius whined, sounding weary and pained, glaring hard at the round, three-foot mirror he had set up beside his bed ever since he was eleven, "It's not _nearly_ messy enough,"

"Finished!" declared James suddenly from the doorway, startling Remus, Peter, and Sirius into a bungling jerk as he re-entered the dormitory in a speedy walk, and quite nearly, tripped over Remus's spread-out legs.

"As usual," Remus responded blearily from the floor, looking up at James with a faintly cocked eyebrow, "I've no idea what you're going on about."

Grinning, James eagerly dropped to his knees beside Remus, who, before gazing questioningly back at him, had momentarily flicked his eyes over to where Sirius stood, or rather, had been standing.

Peter had viciously kicked over the "book" pedestal Sirius had spent some five, eager minutes constructing.

"My speech," James answered happily, "Just finished it at the loo,"

Remus could've sworn he'd stopped breathing for a moment at this information.

"You said you'd finished that thing ages ago!" He choked out hysterically, his face pale with shock. James nervously chewed the corner of his lip as though now deeply regretting having spoken a word of his recent achievement.

"And… so I have," James replied quickly, coughing in an attempt to lower his suddenly pitchy voice, "Really, five minutes ago—_ages_, it is,"

Remus pinched the bit of skin separating his eyebrows, his head bent low as though in solemn prayer.

"Did you," Remus panted, as though he were having considerable difficulty getting air to his lungs, "At least remove the nasty bit about Snape?"

James feigned serious contemplation. "Which bit?"

Remus's eyes widened in horror.

"There's more than one?!"

James fell back laughing.

"Calm yourself, Moony! I'm not the callous, cold-hearted bastard you're constantly making me out to be-"

Remus snorted. James ignored this.

"The git's perfectly capable of embarrassing himself without _my help_,"

"_There!_"

James and Remus glanced up from their respective places on the floor, and were slightly amused to learn that Peter had pinned Sirius on all fours with the advantageous employ of his entire weight—beneath which Sirius was groaning with what sounded like unendurable pain—and had successfully pinned Sirius's hood in all the appropriate places.

"Merlin, Peter!" Sirius wheezed, "What d'you do? Eat your entire family?"

"Stuff it," Peter smacked him hard on the head.

"Just remembered: ran into the missus on the way here," James informed them gravely, roughly straightening his glasses, and shoving them higher over his nose, "Reckons we ought to be downstairs in the next bloody minute or two,"

Remus stuck out a pale wrist, his lips tightening into a wince as he briefly surveyed the front of his watch, "Agreed."

Remus gently smoothed out the wrinkles from his robes, "Everyone have their ceremony hat?" He inquired quickly over his shoulder,

"Yes mum," sniffed Sirius, and James punched him playfully on the shoulder.

"Mum!" Sirius moaned, grinning, "Jamesie hit me on the shoulder!"

"Lord, you must have been a difficult child," Remus shook his head gravely, looking rather as though he didn't want to fathom the idea, and Sirius, shutting the door loudly behind him, let out a little bark of laughter.

"You don't know the half of it, mate."

* * *

"Finally!" groaned Pragna indignantly from the stuffed armchair she'd grumpily esconced herself in a half an hour ago, abruptly sitting up in her seat to chuck a fat, red pillow at a sleeping Belinda, who cracked open a bemused eye the moment it landed with a faint _'poosh'_ on the right side of her face.

"What took you four so _bloody long_ to get ready?"

"Hair issues," Sirius grunted, holding James stiffly by the shoulders whilst he critically examined his wincing reflection on James's round spectacles.

Belinda immediately raised herself, it appeared, at the sound of Sirius's voice, picking anxiously at several places in her hair, and quickly straightening the wizard's cap that had, until that very moment, sat slightly askew on top her head.

Lily and Pragna quietly shared knowing looks at this, trapping uncontrolled bursts of giggles in their hands when Belinda had leaned down momentarily to adjust the loose straps on her sandals.

James, for all he could see with Sirius bobbing up and down constantly within his line of vision, had not missed the subtle difference in Lily's appearance. Her cheeks we're slightly pinker with a touch of rouge, and a section of her hair had been pulled back, swept artfully on either side of her head with gleaming, black lacquer clips, while the rest fell, curly at the tips, over her chest, and shoulders.

"I can't believe it!" Belinda burst out suddenly, rising, rather dry-lipped and white-faced, from her little sandal mission, "We're actually going to graduate in just a few minutes!" She looked as though she had only just been aware of this fact, and Sirius, who finally appeared to be content with the thoroughly disheveled state of his dark hair, let go of a very disgruntled James, and turned to her, favouring her bewildered remark with his usual bark-like laughter,

"You can't believe it? I'm surprised James, and I here weren't sent an invitation to attend next year, what with the detentions, and History of Magic 'Trolls' we've got between us-"

"What?" exclaimed Lily in a tone of both exasperation and mild amusement, "And have you two stay another year? I think Professor McGonagall would rather swallow coal,"

"Speaking of the lovely woman," Remus broke in crisply, stealing another quick, anxious look from the cracked face of his old wrist watch, "Unless we want her to swoop down on us like harpy, we had better form ourselves a line, and get down to the Great Hall,"

Lily nodded.

"Right, everyone remember their places? Sirius you're at the—_Sirius!_" Lily cried, rather indignant to find Sirius, astonishingly on his hands and knees, crawling furtively towards the back of the half-formed line where James brought up the rear with his surname of 'Potter.'

"Alas, then," Sirius gave a dramatic sniff, extending a mournful hand to James as Lily wrenched him hard around the neck of the robes, and yanked him bodily to the front of the line, "Fare thee well, Prongs… love you mate, don't forget to write-"

Peter's small, beady eyes were unusually watery with what appeared to be enormous relish at the prospect of having James to himself for the entire length of the ceremony.

Remus, too, looked exceedingly delighted.

"It's only a godsend that you two are going to be separated for the next three hours," he declared volubly with an obvious relief, and Sirius shot him a rather filthy look from over Belinda, and Lily's right shoulders.

"Alright, Black," Lily prompted bracingly, mashing her lips together hard for a full five seconds as though to give them more color, "Lead the way."

Looking a little brightened at the small bit of authority his surname had granted him, Sirius jutted his chin out considerably, and cheerfully headed the group on their way out the portrait whole with extremely high, square shoulders, and a flamboyant walk that bordered dangerously on a strut.

Astounded yet delighted, the Gryffindors were met with many excited yelps of 'Hi!' and friendly, forthcoming cries of 'Hullo!'—the most popular recipients being both Lily and James—from the year's graduating Hufflepuffs, and some slightly apologetic-looking Ravenclaws as they departed speedily from their sixth magical staircase down, and briskly made their way to the wide, fire-lit entrance hall that led directly into the Great Hall.

The Slytherins, James could see, frowning slightly, we're already assembled at their table, seated in quiet pairs and threes across from one another, looking with strained attention at a wildly gesticulating Professor Slughorn who was dressed quite exuberantly in deep, velvet robes of a striking, regal green, his abnormally large, very rotund stomach just barely contained in a fancy, elegantly-cut waistcoat that appeared to be made from a dragonskin that was only a shade lighter than the color of his robes.

"You can continue your conversation with Miss Mitchell later, Black."

James immediately spun his head around at the pleasantly familiar voice, and spotted a slightly put-out Sirius smiling apologetically to a very different-looking Professor McGonagall.

Professor McGonagall had traded in her trademark emerald robes, and had ceremoniously opted for a deep, majestic scarlet, her long, dark hair smoothed back into a deceptively plain bun.

"Thank you, Black. I need scarce remind any of you that as seventh-years your behavior over the course of this evening's events will undoubtedly reflect upon the school," She intoned severely, a hint of a warm smile betraying her tightly pressed lips as she regarded them each silently for a moment with what appeared to be a tearful, reminscent gleam present in both her normally stern, ordinarily forbidding eyes.

"S'alright, Professor," James said suddenly, a sympathetic smile stretching his lips, "Those detentions we spent together... Merlin knows, _no one_ can take them away from me. I'll keep them safe—right here."

James gently patted a reverent hand over where his heart beat, and Sirius let out an obscene snort he attempted to pass off as a wild cough.

"Head cold," He muttered behind the fingers he'd strategically placed on his mouth, and Professor McGonagall arched a faintly amused eyebrow.

"How very touching, Potter. Black, I sincerely hope you are well-aware of the significance of your position-"

Sirius's gloating expression said otherwise.

"There will be four rows in the front of the platform to accommodate each house," explained Professor McGonagall tartly,

"Gryffindor will occupy the first row, so Black you'll be responsible for herding the rest of the school, Hufflepuff will follow after Potter, then Ravenclaw, then Slytherin. _Do not_-"

Professor McGonagall nostrils flared exceptionally as though in warning, "Sit down until the last of the Slytherins has arrived—the absence of footsteps should tell you!" Professor McGonagall added impatiently as though she'd read Sirius's mind and couldn't fathom why he'd even think to ask such a silly question, and Sirius shut his half-open mouth immediately, smirking.

"Now, if any of you have any questions regarding tonight's ceremony, concerning the procession, your walk across the stage-"

From the out of the corner of his eye, James could spot Peter shaking the hand of an invisible Dumbledore, leaning in proudly to accept what apparently was a very large diploma. The self-congratulatory smile fell instantly from Peter's face as he caught James, watching him gleefully and raising very enthusiastic thumbs-up's in his direction.

When there appeared to be no pressing questions, Professor McGonagall asked them to join the rest of the houses back at the entrance hall.

"God, I hope I don't trip on the stage!" Pragna was voicing this particular concern to Lily in highly distressed tones as they all trooped back anxiously towards the noisy din of the nearly-filled entrance hall.

James quickly dug a sweaty hand in his right trouser pocket, making sure the speech he'd spent a morning, and an afternoon writing was still there.

"Everything in order?" Remus inquired, a little too innocently, once James had withdrawn his hand from his pocket with a feeling of delighted relief that must have shown on his face,

"Course," James grinned widely, and then they all heard, too soon, James thought, Dumbledore's voice sound cheerfully from outside the towering walls of the castle.

"Good evening, proud parents, family, welcome guests-"

James could scarcely make out the rest of Dumbledore's warm introduction as an extremely contagious outbreak of eager squealing, and gasping took place all around him.

Students who'd momentarily strayed away from their proper places in line to visit friends, immediately resumed their positions with a panicked start, looks of nervousness, and excitement easily discernible on each of their pale, slightly clammy-looking faces.

James, for his part, was a bit stunned to receive a sharp jab to the stomach from Peter's elbow, and looked up to see Lily smiling broadly at him from over Remus's turned shoulder.

James happily returned her smile, not hearing Dumbledore at all when he'd said, "Now I would like to ask you all to please join me in the welcoming of this term's graduating year of the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

With a gentle nudge from Belinda ("Sirius…_now?_" "Right!"), Sirius hastily descended the large stone steps leading in and away from the massive front doors, everyone behind him instantly following suit, raising and shuffling their graduation robes about them every once in a while for fear of accidentally tripping on a random fold.

What awaited the students near the edge of the school lake was nothing short of spectacular.

As a slightly chilly wind played with James's hair, James easily spied Dumbledore, the house heads, and two surly-looking Ministry officials sitting in a tidy row of white chairs on top of a large, raised platform carpeted in black.

The platform was in the shape of a semi-circle, and was amply skirted in a sumptuous fabric that was alternately striped in each of the four house colors; scarlet, yellow, cobalt, and green. A great, heavy-looking curtain that had been cut from the same fabric, hung, suspended from a giant wooden archway that loomed above the platform.

"_JAMESIE!_"

Woefully embarrassed at being thus addressed, James whipped his head about angrily in the direction of the voice, instantly sighting a slightly plump, dark-haired woman who was brandishing a camera wildly at him from the front of the first column of seats facing the great platform.

"_Mum_," James growled murderously out of the corner of his mouth.

At front of the line, Sirius was struggling with the obvious urge not to burst out laughing.

The middle column was easily the smallest out of the three, and turning sharply, Sirius proceeded down the first row with exaggerated care, making such a show of almost sitting down the last seat that Professor McGonagall very nearly shouted at him from where she sat rigidly, tight-lipped, her hands curling into fists, next to a fairly bright-eyed Dumbledore.

As the sound of a hundred footsteps gradually faded into still silence, Sirius waited about a minute or two before grinning hugely at Professor McGonagall, and finally taking his seat.

James, along with the other slightly cold seventh-years, took Sirius's cue and sat down as well.

Eyeing them all very warmly, Dumbledore rose steadily from his seat, a wide, celebratory smile on his wizened face as he approached a small, wooden stand located at the middle of the platform, upon which a large megaphone had been attached.

"Thank you. I stand here, in front of you all, a very proud, and very moved man. It is neither wearing nor unexciting, even for a man of my considerable age, to serve witness every year in the acknowledgment of certain witches and wizards whom I've had the great pleasure of watching grow from frightfully timid, unsure little children..."

Dumbledore's kind, appreciative gaze swept through the seated seventh-years,

"To wonderfully confident, brilliantly gifted men and women.

There is not a single student present here which I cannot boast of being incredibly passionate, and immensely bright. And so…"

Dumbledore had raised a fluid hand to his left, where suddenly, a large, oak desk, with several black-ribboned scrolls arranged artfully into a tall pyramid appeared,

"Let us honor their growth."

Professor McGonagall got up to her feet, situating herself primly beside the desk, and levitating the top scroll from the pyramid skillfully into her left hand.

"From the House of Gryffindor, a house which celebrates outstanding bravery, and unyielding nerve—Black, Sirius!"

Sirius climbed to his feet to thunderous applause, James clapping the hardest, joining both Remus and Peter as they yelled, "YEEAAAAH, SIRIIIUUUUS!"

Sirius went up a tiny set of steps positioned at the right side of the platform, and crossed the stage with an eagerly outstretched hand towards Professor Dumbledore, who pumped it amiably with a wide, affectionate smile that was visible beneath his long, silvery-white bread.

Professor McGonagall tearfully handed Sirius his certificate scroll who took it with a little, jaunty dance that immediately earned loud, appreciative giggles from the crowd.

Then, to the shock and hilarity of nearly all present (several parents looked quite outraged; Professor McGonagall had to clutch at the end of the large desk Dumbledore had summoned on the platform for support,) every girl from Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw, along with Pragna, and a flushed Belinda, threw bright, silk, and lace-trimmed knickers at Sirius from where they sat, five-feet from the platform, cackling madly in their seats.

Professor McGonagall's watery eyes had bulged alarmingly to the size of golf-balls before each of the the lurid knickers exploded three-quarters of the way towards Sirius into tiny, fluttering showers of glitter, and violently rainbow-colored confetti.

James, Remus, and Peter roared approvingly with laughter.

"A telltale display I think," Dumbledore spoke tenderly into the megaphone, and it was clear that he too was amused, "Of that immense brightness I spoke of earlier,"

The crowd broke into hearty chuckles, and Sirius returned, grinning, to his seat with considerable bits of sparkling confetti stuck to his hair.

"Carmichael, Belinda!"

Belinda pushed herself off immediately from her seat, completely unaware of the odd look Sirius shot her as she ascended the platform steps gracefully to generous applause, and met Dumbledore with a small, blushing smile.

"Evans, Lily!"

The applause Lily received was even more tremendous than Sirius's, though James, who was cracking his knuckles furiously inside his sleeves, thought that the Slytherins' clapping looked a bit forced.

When Lily had arrived to another group of small steps on the left side of the platform, she was rather taken aback to find James standing there, having left his seat with very little detection, beaming widely up at her with an enormous, complicated-looking bouquet, positively to the brim with numerous, large, water-speckled Calla, and Tiger lilies.

"_Aww!_" the crowd chorused shrilly with glee, sinking into their seats with long, dreamy sighs, and Lily blushed a deep scarlet, drawing James into a tiny, grateful kiss as he lead her gently back to her seat.

"Lupin, Remus!"

Sirius pumped his fist savagely into the air, howling. James had leaned forward in his seat to wolf-whistle. Remus's cheeks we're slightly tinged pink as he regarded Dumbledore speechlessly with what looked like deep reverence.

"Patil, Pragna!"

Pragna was mounting the platform steps at snail's pace, her tall shoes appearing as though they were mired deeply in a tub molasses the way she was lifting them with agonizing delicacy, her back rigid with caution.

"Pettigrew, Peter!"

Roughly side-stepping Sirius's outstretched foot, Peter clambered up the steps nervously, his stubby fingers knotted together against his plump, slightly jiggling belly as James, Sirius, and Remus cried, "_Whoooooo!_" wildly for encouragement.

"Potter, James!"

The crowd seemed to explode with enthusiastic applause; countless admiring screams pierced the air. James beamed down upon them all as he climbed the steps up to the stage, shaking Dumbledore's hand zealously with a wide, lopsided grin, and pulling a stunned Professor McGonagall into a small, one-armed hug.

Sirius, and Remus had placed their hands around their mouths, and we're shouting, "MARRY ME, JAMES!" at the top of their lungs. Lily was putting her hands together almost maniacally, happy tears glittering in her large, green eyes as she stared up at him with a proud, watery smile present on her lips.

The ceremony progressed with Dumbledore shifting his attention to the Hufflepuffs who occupied the slightly longer row directly behind the Gryffindors.

The Ravenclaws followed immediately after almost a dozen, slightly weepy Hufflepuffs had crossed the stage, each having clutched Dumbledore's hand tightly with great, wide-eyed looks of sadness and gratitude on their faces, and all of them having accepted their certificates from the Head of the Hufflepuff house in a dramatic flurry of hysterical embraces, and open sobbing.

Douglas, who was the first of the Ravenclaws to be summoned to the stage, paled a little beneath his pompous expression as he caught sight of James's hands clenching dangerously into bloodless fists on his lap.

Sirius appeared to have experienced a rather similar reaction when Roberta Bowles, looking as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever with her dark, waist-length hair charmed prettily into loose, weightless ringlets, approached Dumbledore with a big, syrupy smile, and forget-me-not blue eyes wide, and twinkling with stunned pleasure.

When the last of the Ravenclaws had descended from the platform, Dumbledore addressed the Slytherins, who, James couldn't help noticing with undisguised scorn, looked rather as though they wished they were somewhere else as they each climbed up the steps almost lazily, promptly dropping Dumbledore's hand once they'd shook it as though they couldn't bear to grasp it any longer than was necessary.

Remus had glowered at Sirius reproachfully when Snape had narrowed his eyes at Sirius's silently moving lips which had said, '_Snivellus_,' as though with the clear, joyful promise of injury.

After Snape had taken his certificate scroll with a wry, contemptuous grimace, Slughorn quietly returned to his seat next to Professor Flitwick, and Dumbledore gestured to both Lily and James, who took eachother shakily by the hand, and took to the platform again.

"And now before our feast, a few parting words, from your Head girl, and Head boy."

James squeezed Lily's trembling fingers for support, and Lily grinned at him weakly.

"You'll do great," he whispered as the crowd erupted into another riotous bout of deafening applause.

Dumbledore stepped aside to make way for Lily, and returned James's tiny smile as he wheeled about to join a very red-nosed Professor McGonagall.

Lily hastily unfolded a very wrinkled piece of paper, and set it down on the stand. She let out a low breath, her eyes closed for a moment, then she lifted them open again, smiling widely at the audience.

"This speech took me nearly all of a year to write," Lily confessed breathlessly to the megaphone, turning a bright pink in embarrassment, and the crowd responded warmly with soft laughter,

"It would have probably taken me much longer, and I might've been up in the dormitories at this very moment, having locked myself in, cringing and twitching with the absolute horridness of what I'd written had it not been for a very wise, and very kind person telling me that I didn't have to be good at everything, I just had to be myself."

Lily had half-turned her head to gaze fondly at James, her wide-open, startlingly green eyes swimming with gratitude, and James, feeling the eyes of hundreds of people on him, couldn't help growing a little warm in the face as he returned her smile cheerfully with a small, sheepish shrug.

"I didn't understand at the time, what he meant, and I couldn't understand for a while..." Lily broke off, shaking her head a little in confusion before ploughing on,

"I guess… I've always, sort of… felt this certain pressure to do well… for reasons I'm sure some of you can understand," Lily appeared almost apologetic. James knew at once that she was referring to the great, and painful insecurity she'd once had about being muggle-born.

Several people in the audience looked up at her with a twinge of understanding, and their smiles seemed to grow broader as she spoke again.

"So I read. I read until I thought my eyes would fall out. I filled my head with things I thought were important. I never failed to planned ahead, and I turned into a right little perfectionist-"

Some of the seventh-years, James included, nodded eagerly in unison, and Lily burst out laughing into the megaphone, producing one of the most beautiful sounds James had had the great fortune of hearing several times in his life,

"_Well_, I didn't like it much, to be perfectly honest... this swotting business, but I'd distinguished myself. With numerous Outstandings, OWLS, NEWTS… Became a prefect, and topped it all off with this," Lily's still-embarrassed gaze traveled momentarily in the direction of her Head Girl badge, which gleamed a pale, muted silver in the twilight.

"So when it came time to write a speech," Lily restored her painfully timid gaze at the crowd, "I approached it like I did every assignment. But I learned very early that it wasn't anything like writing an essay, where you could just pull answers out of a book. This speech.. it asked a lot from me.

I couldn't look anything up, there was absolutely nothing to research. It had to be .. well, I suppose it was just like James said, I had to be myself," Lily gripped the edges of the stand tighter,

"So I tried to remember little things from my stay here, something sad, something funny. Something _meaningful_. But I couldn't remember much, and when I'd ask everyone else, they all had all sorts of stories to tell, and I'd be wondering, where could I have possibly been then? What was I doing? ... It seemed almost miraculous that I should miss these things, that I should remember absolutely nothing about them, and then I realized, with a sort numbing sensation, that I had been _reading_, writing an essay, was in the library doing _research_, had been out in the corridors, in the middle of another late patrol.

I had spent the better part of my seven years working for a future, trying hard to make everything look easy, _trying to prove myself_, that ... well, I sort missed out.. on a lot.

And that will always be one of my deepest regrets.

There are just some things that you only get to do once, and if you don't.. I suppose, stop and smell the roses, it'll be like you'd never even done it at all. And I'm so _fortunate_, and so _grateful_ that I have people in my life who've told me countless times to put the books down, to stop for a bloody moment, to just live. If there's anything worth telling, if there's anything I can tell you lot that's remotely important it's that when you all leave here tomorrow, I want you to _live_.

Merlin forbid any of you drop dead and die,"—the crowd laughed appreciatively—"But I'm sure you all know what I mean. Thank you all so much, and the best of luck to each and everyone one of you."

The audience burst loudly into raucous applause; Pragna and Belinda's eyes were sparkling brightly with tears. James had gathered Lily tightly in his arms for a quick, congratulatory embrace, then, letting go reluctantly, abruptly switched places with her so that he now stood behind the stand, grinning broadly at the audience who'd begun to stop clapping almost at once at the sight of him.

"A small request before I begin," James said calmly into the megaphone, once the patter of applause had died down considerably, "I'd appreciate it loads if you lot would clap and laugh incessantly after _everything_ I say,"

The crowd's response to this request was almost immediate: many of them had brought their hands round together enthusiastically, and started laughing with some surprise at James's silly introduction.

"A charming audience, I love you all," James fell gracefully into a mock bow, and again, the crowd happily obliged James with boisterous cheers, and chuckles.

"When Professor McGonagall, a lovely, exceptionally sweet-tempered woman (the audience, including a surprisingly smiling Professor McGonagall, did not fail to note James's sweetened sarcasm) informed me plainly, not two weeks ago, that it was, indeed, part of my duty as Headboy to give a five-minute farewell address to the graduating year, doubtless one that would wax on painfully about soppy, nancy stuff: how I'd miss you all so much I'd no doubt cry every night from now on in my sleep at the sting of your absences—_I will_,"

The seventh-years nodded in mock approval,

"—How I've learned so much in my seven years here at Hogwarts I'm sure to be the next running candidate for Minister for Magic—_two years at the latest_—how you should all then, after my shining example, follow your heart, strive for your dreams, reach for the stars, pick yourself up after every fall, all that inspirational stuff you normally get from your dear, ol' mum.

And when Professor McGongall assured me, that there was, in fact, no possible way of evading, or shirking off this unsavoury task without a punishing curse to the gut, I thought her barking mad for a moment, because not until a few weeks ago I'd never even, ever once, thought about these things.

I'd been excited to attend Hogwarts, as were you all, but about a year in, I, honestly, couldn't wait to get out. Eleven, Quidditch star, top of every—well perhaps not _every_ class—I thought I knew everything. I thought I was good and ready for the world. Well, the one thing I wasn't ready for was... the one thing I was ready for was _this_. _Today_. Odd thing, really, waiting for something for so long, only to feel later that you'd rather it never come at all.

Because today isn't just the day when we lot get to clap ourselves in the ruddy back and yell out 'Congrats, mate!' to every bloody soul we just happen to be sitting near. True, we've gained a lot, knowledge, experience, and what have you, and today's the day we honour that, with the people we love, and with the people who've patiently armed us with the things we ought to know for the real world. But while today is a day of gain, I suppose you can say too, that today is a day of loss."

The silence in the crowd was tangible. The audience was staring up at James raptly, clearly stunned that his speech had taken a surprisingly serious turn.

"I've honestly—never been in the company of so many outrageously attractive people in all my life,"

The crowd instantly shook in their seats with stunned laughter. Many of the seventh-years we're now shouting, "Yeah!"; scores of seventh-year girls we're flipping their hair over their shoulders coquettishly, and batting their eyelashes at him by way of appreciation.

"_Really_. It's small wonder why I almost failed my Transfigurations practical—_lower that skirt, Lily,_" Her face reddening furiously, Lily punched James half-angrily, and half-amusedly on the arm,

"In the many years we've come to know eachother, and occasionally, driven eachother mad, we've come to be something of a bloated family. And a highly dysfunctional one at that. It's disturbing, really. I mean we wake up to one another every single day—you should see Sirius without make-up, not for the faint of heart, or stomach, I assure you—"

Sirius cried a shrill, mock-indignant "Oi!" over the sudden snorting of several, highly amused Hufflepuff girls,

"We eat at the same bloody table, at the same time, and know odd, alarming things about one another that we really would rather not have known if we could've helped it at the time.

We've borrowed, broken, and more often than not, lost one another's things, called eachother foul names because we were terrifically angry, and at the end of a particularly wretched day, we vent to one another even though we're quite sure that sometimes we tune one another out.

But I suppose that's the fantastic, really annoying thing about family. They never _really_ go away.

They'll be there five, ten years from now, asking you whether or not you've finally settled down with a proper girl, embarassing you endlessly at dinner parties, society functions, little get-together's... shamelessly laughing at your countless, stupid mistakes, and, doubtless, crying with you through the more serious ones. So..."

James mimed raising a special, celebratory toast to the seventh-years, most of whom, with the exception of a few defiant-looking Slytherins, delightedly raised invisible glasses to him in turn, their wide, upturned eyes glistening with the strong possibility of tears.

"To my forty-odd siblings, close, estranged, _adopted_ (James tipped his head jokingly in Sirius's direction, and the audience rang with bubbly laughter,) enjoy today.

It's been a riot. Cheers."

The Gryffindors practically leapt from their seats to reward James with a zealous standing ovation. Half the Hufflepuffs were trying very hard to discreetly mop up their pink eyes, and dripping noses on their sleeves. The Ravenclaws had joined the Gryffindors heartily in the pattering of applause.

Waves and waves of clapping, teary-eyed guests rose wistfully from their seats as forty-five wizard caps soared in the air.

James twisted his head around to beam hugely at Lily whose pink, slightly freckled cheeks were streaked brightly with hot tears. She let out a watery giggle as James gently draped an arm over her quaking shoulders, and planted a small kiss on her warm forehead,

"We'll turn out alright, yeah?" Lily whispered timidly into James's ear as the seventh-years below them we're tangled in quiet, mournful embraces, and rowdy, celebratory bear hugs.

James regarded her silently for a moment, occupying himself with a stray lock of her brilliant red hair. He twirled the silken strands around and around his curled right forefinger, and then, with that charmingly crooked, attractively lopsided smile that Lily loved, released them.

"Course, we will," James said in a thoughtful voice, "As long as you keep calling me an arse whenever I'm being one, I expect I'll be fine _at least_,"

"You know that's a full-time job right?" Lily informed him wryly,

"Lifetime's what I had in mind, actually," James grinned.

Lily positively beamed.


End file.
